


Bloody Fists, Dusted Dracs, and Your Lip Gloss Smile

by la_guera, violetlolitapop



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fabulous Killjoys Fusion, Badass Katsuki Yuuri, Badass Victor Nikiforov, Everyone's a badass, M/M, Oblivious Heartbreaker Katsuki Yuuri, Pining Victor Nikiforov, Slow Burn, Unrequited Crush, and a sadass, and killjoys never die, criminal activity, i know this is a niche genre but i need it to live i am still an emo kid, or is it???, she was a killjoy just like her momma, the killjoy au we didn't know we needed but i did and i'm providing, things get violent when you gotta survive, this fic is dedicated to my baby girl helena, wasteland and desert fights
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 04:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 54,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13228161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/la_guera/pseuds/la_guera, https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetlolitapop/pseuds/violetlolitapop
Summary: It's 2018 and the world is not what it once was so many years ago. There's desert wastelands where people are doing what they can to survive and a tyrannical corporation running the only form of a government in the distance.Victor and the other tumbleweeds are just trying to live their lives.(or: a killjoy love story starring a desert dweller and a zonerunner doing their best.)





	1. Look Alive, Sunshine

**Author's Note:**

> zone vocab:
> 
> 48: the average amount of time (48 hours) a runner can spend in or around battery without being sus  
> angel food: a runner that isn't prepared for outlaw life, used as an insult  
> bin rat: scavengers and merchants that work to sell their goods independently from the flower chain.  
> blaster: a raygun (individual)  
> carbons: money, new form of currency in the zones and battery city  
> clap: a fight  
> crash queen: thrill-seeker and dare devil, can be anyone who identifies as such  
> death tech: desert doctor  
> drac: a battery foot soldier/agent  
> dust/dusted: to kill, to be killed  
> dust angel: term of endearment  
> firefight: a fight using primarily rayguns  
> ghost/ghosted: to kill, to be killed  
> hit the red line: when you drive so fast you hit the red line of a car's speed gauge  
> indvidual: a raygun  
> shiny: cool, awesome, great,

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Okay, here's a new one. So, there's a gang of dwellers living out in the desert, and they all get along like a Drac on fire. But then one day, one of them decides to not have any chill and makes a fool of himself..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zone vocab:  
> 48: the average amount of time (48 hours) a runner can spend in or around battery without being sus  
> angel food: a runner that isn't prepared for outlaw life, used as an insult  
> bin rat: scavengers and merchants that work to sell their goods independently from the flower chain.  
> blaster: a raygun (individual)  
> carbons: money, new form of currency in the zones and battery city  
> clap: a fight  
> crash queen: thrill-seeker and dare devil, can be anyone who identifies as such  
> death tech: desert doctor  
> drac: a battery foot soldier/agent  
> dust/dusted: to kill, to be killed  
> dust angel: term of endearment  
> firefight: a fight using primarily rayguns  
> ghost/ghosted: to kill, to be killed  
> hit the red line: when you drive so fast you hit the red line of a car's speed gauge  
> indvidual: a raygun  
> shiny: cool, awesome, great, all the good things

_krsst!_

_hiss_

_krsst!_

_krsst!_

_“ –Sunshine. 109 in the sky, but the pigs won’t quit. You’re here with me, Dr. Death Defying. I’ll be your surgeon, your proctor, your helicopter, pumpin’ out the slaughtermatic sounds to keep you alive–”_

_“Yuri, don’t play with the radio.”_

_“I’m not listening to anymore of those bullshit dinosaur tapes, I wanna hear real waves for once.”_

_“Y’know, whatever Dr. D plays is probably from the same tapes. Since we do buy the copies from them and all.”_

_“…shut up.”_

 

* * *

 

The interior of their shelter is a mess.

It’s not like there’s even that much of a space to make such a mess to being with, but lo and behold it is so. There are clothes scattered, leading from the back room to the front where the salvaged mirror sits above the water basin, to the water from said basin being spilled out everywhere around it from the many times he’s stuck his fingers in there just so that he can slick back his hair.

(It never stays though, his fringe will always fall in front of his eye no matter what he does and if he would just own it instead of trying to tame it, the better off everyone within his vicinity will be.)

“What time is it?!”

Victor shoots out from the front window, shouting and scaring the absolute hell out of Yuri who had been doing nothing but resting on the bench right outside of their shelter and didn’t deserve that at all. He takes a swing at him, but Victor shoots back inside and there’s some sounds of stumbling around, even a crash (and that doesn’t sound good) and soon the makeshift door that replaced the beaded curtain is being slammed open and falls off from the hinges.

That slows him down and actually makes him stop for a moment. Yuri is staring at him with what could only be described as teenage disbelief and Victor just shrugs and props the door back against the frame. He’ll get Mila to fix it later.

“You maybe wanna fuckin’ chill for a second?” Yuri ends up muttering at him after he figures out that Victor is going to do absolutely nothing to repair their home right now.

Victor doesn’t pay him any mind though, he’s rushing past him and heading for the small lookout platform Mila stands on, cracked binoculars in hand and an Individual at her hip. He pushes his way up as well, squishes in next to her in the little booth made out of nothing but scrap planks of wood and the scavenged bits of tin that used to be a roof from their last shack out in Zone 3.

“What time is it?” he asks, again.

Mila, no different than Yuri, shoves him over so she can have more room again and says, “I don’t know. But it’s gotta be past noon, maybe. Seems like that.”

“When are they gonna get here?” Victor whines and slumps next to her. “Also, what do you think of this vest?”

Mila gives his outfit no more than a side glance and shrugs. “It’s okay.”

“Be honest!”

“The red washes you out.”

“What?!”

“You’re too pale, Victor," she tells him. "All that sun you work in just makes you pink and your hair is practically bleached white at this point, the red makes you all washed up and out.”

He doesn’t need to hear any more. It never takes much to get him to second guess his limited fashion choices, and he takes her words to heart. He strips out of the red vest he had chosen and is left in nothing but a pair of ripped jeans and one of Yuri’s black tank tops.

“I spent so long trying to figure out what to wear,” he whines, again, and musses with the hair that he spent so much time on… again…

“You actually look fine like that,” she says after giving him a proper up and down look over. “Rugged real shiny like.”

“Is that a good look?”

Mila only shrugs and goes back to her watch. “Well, that’s how he usually sees you and hasn’t run screaming yet, sooo…”

Victor shoves her to the side again, knocks her off center and Mila just laughs when she hits the ledge and then throws herself at him with full force. They both topple over and hit the floor with a loud thud and send dust flying up and around them. Victor has .2 seconds to realize what’s going to happen next and rolls off to the side before Mila can get the upper hand and shove his face in the dirt even more.

“You can’t hit a girl and not get hit back, Victor!” she shouts and grabs at his legs to keep him down.

“I didn’t even hit you!” Victor shouts back and kicks at her hands.

“Shove, hit, it’s all the same out here!”

“Kick his ass, Mila!” Yuri cheers from where he still sits and stretches his legs out to get comfortable for the show.

Victor has never been much of a fighter, not really. He’s good with an Individual – give him a target and full battery, and he can shoot ‘till everyone around him is nothing short of dust, but hand to hand combat has never been his strong suit. Mila, on the other hand, grew up in a war zone, starting off as a motorbaby to crash kid to the self-proclaimed Desert Queen of Zone 3 and has fought tooth and nail for the semblance of peace she loves.

It’s no surprise when she gets Victor on his stomach and straddles his back, both of his arms pinned behind him and gasping for air.

“Dost thou yield?” she asks haughtily, and presses down on his limbs.

“I yield!” he calls out and the moment she lets up, he rolls around too fast for her to stop him and tackles her back to the ground.

“Cheater!” she shrieks out, but is laughing all the same.

“Alls fair in love and war!” he laughs along with her and tickles down her sides.

Mila is pounding away at his shoulders, not hard enough to do anything other than egg him on and her laughter is contagious. Even Yuri, still sitting off in the shade, is grinning and calling for Georgi to come watch Mila lose her shit.

It’s only when Georgi joins them out front from the gardens in the back that anyone really notices the car coming towards their camp.

Georgi notices it first, he always does even if he’s not technically the one on look-out. He spots the way the dust kicks up on the dirt path they carved out for themselves from the main road around the speeding black dot coming in just this side of a little too fast. He nudges Yuri and Yuri notices it in an instant. He leaps up from his seat and pulls down his shirt where it’s ridden up and steps out into the sun, fingers in his mouth, and lets out a loud, sharp whistle that stops the other two.

Both their heads whip in the direction of the speeding bullet coming right at them and Victor’s breath hitches.

“Oh, shit,” Victor mutters out and is up with no hesitation. “They’re here.”

Mila holds her hand out to him, and he helps her back up to her feet without so much as a second thought. He immediately starts to pat the dirt and dust off from his clothes in some hopeless attempt to looks half-way presentable.

“There’s dirt all over your face,” Mila points on unhelpfully. She only laughs when Victor rubs his hands against his skin and does nothing but make it worse. “Leave it. Now you really look rugged.”

“I should’ve left you stranded in that pick-up when I had the chance,” he grouses at her and turns on his heel to walk back to their shelter.

Her laughter follows him all the way back, as does the crunch of her feet running through the dirt right after him. They both make it back to their tiny porch to join both Yuri and Georgi by the time that black dot speeding towards them takes the shape of an old, poorly painted _Impala_ with rusted chrome on the bumper and begins to slow down the closer it approaches. Eventually, it pulls up some feet away from them, skidding to a stop and kicking up dust. There’s music playing loudly and they can hear every bit of it through the windows.

The engine is killed, the music cuts off, and Victor sees Yuri itching for his own Individual and puts a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“Play nice,” he says, but Yuri only shakes him off.

The dust settles, and the driver side door flies open. No one steps out of it, not exactly. A gangly kid with bright yellow hair and a shock of red thrown in there stands on the panel and nearly leaps on top of the roof to stare at them His eyes are hidden against the black band painted across them, making them look all that much smaller, and himself a little wilder for it, but he gives that same wide, bright smile that he always does.

“What’s the 411, my dust darlings?” he calls out, and waves at them happily.

“You’re so fucking annoying!” Yuri shouts back at him, but from the way the other boy laughs, it doesn’t seem to faze him much.

The other door opens and out steps a woman dressed primarily in pink, as always. They always see her in the same variation: pink shorts, black tank top, white vest embroidered with pink cherry blossoms by Victor’s apprentice himself on the back, and white band going across her eyes, the same flowers painted right above her brow.

“Sorry to be so late,” she calls out to them. “We tried to stay on time, but there was a clap with some Dracs near the Springs.”

“We didn’t even notice,” Mila tells her. “Nope, not at all. Not to the point where we made complete messes just to look good–”

This time Victor does hit her, elbows her arm hard enough to get her to stop talking and approach their visitors like the rational adult he is. The others follow him behind as sometimes it takes all of them for the supply exchange.

“Was it a bad one?” he asks.

“Nah!” says their driver, who slams his door shut and walks over to them with his hands in his pockets. “It wasn’t that bad.”

Him too, he never changes. As far as Victor knows, none of the flowers change their style, and he’s resigned himself to seeing this boy wear the same dingy yellow pants and grey shirt, with the same weathered blue vest torn and frayed and held together with band pins and sutured bottle caps. It’s a look, he’ll admit that much, at least the yellow cherry blossom painted on his cheek is always drawn nicely.

“They looked like vulture food,” he continues to say. “Probably thought they could round up some runners and didn’t know that we got our own laws out here. That and _Kiku_ took most of them out in like, five minutes, it was wild.”

“Again, that’s not my name.”

Victor is usually always well aware of where the last of their trio is at all times, but this time he didn’t even notice when he came out from the backseat, but the soft hint of resignation in his voice is louder in his ears than anything else going on around them.

Like the others, he’s dressed in his own trademarked outfit: black jeans, black shirt with a v-shaped neckline plunging on just the side of a little too much, and his black vest covered in white outlines of embroidered chrysanthemums. It’s Victor’s own handiwork, and he preens every time he sees it, he’s very proud of it. Today is no different, he stands a little taller, and is smiling a little larger, and his heart is beating a little faster just by watching him run his fingers through his slicked back hair and marvel at the way the gold stripe painted across his eyes always compliments his sun-kissed face.

The little white flowers painted on both of his temples are a little smudged, probably from the fire fight earlier, but they’re still clear and they’re still beautiful.

(He’s thrown back to a memory, one that feels like it happened way longer than it probably did, where Victor had stared at his profile until he was caught and in the attempt to not make it weird, asked him what kind of flower he wore.

He had looked away, just for a second, probably didn’t buy into Victor’s pathetic excuse and was wondering how to get away from as soon as possible, but murmured something that Victor couldn’t help but ask him to repeat it because any chance to hear his voice was worth exposing his feelings.

“ _Shiragiku_ ,” he said to him, a little louder, but still a murmur. “ _White Chrysanthemums._ ”)

 “It’s the same though.”

“No, it’s not the same.”

Victor ends up being snapped out of this little memory and brought right back to the present where the seemingly non-argument is getting a little more heated than it should be.

“It means the same thing,” the younger man says. “Right? It still means Chrysanthemum.”

“Technically, but it still has a different meaning to it. What if I just started calling you _Sakura_?”

There’s a beat.

“Well, I mean, that still means Cherry Blossom so I wouldn’t mind?”

The poor man visibly deflates a little. It’s easy to see that this is a battle he is always losing, and that it’s a battle he’s had to fight more than once. It’s endearing, to say the least, and Victor feels a little privileged in being able to have a small look into what their everyday life must be like. He laughs a little, and it calls attention to himself and not even a second later he’s being stares at in turn and Victor’s pretty sure it isn’t just the sun that’s making his face feel hot.

“There’s no getting through to him,” he says with a shrug.

“Shame,” says Victor. “ _Shiragiku_ just sounds a lot prettier.”

He says it without even thinking, and he only realizes how inappropriate that may have been when the other man is suddenly no longer facing him and is instead doing his best to look like he’s surveying the land. For what, who knows? It’s most likely that Victor has stepped over the line. Again.

There’s a little voice in the back of his head that starts screaming whenever he’s being too obvious about his feelings and it’s going off right now.

The little blond menace of their driver saddles up right next to him laughing and says, “Well, I guess I’ll have to use the right name if only because it sounds _prettier_.”

The screaming just gets louder.

“ _Ukon_!” _Ichiyo_ shouts out to them from where her and Mila are unloading sacks filled with clothes and jugs of water from the trunk of their car. “Don’t just stand around, help Yuri with those boxes!”

“I got it!” Yuri is quick to say and swaying under the weight of three loaded cardboard boxes sealed up with heavy duty tape.

_Ukon_ doesn’t seem to pay any mind to what Yuri says. He abandons both Victor and his associate without a second thought and races over to grab the top box. It goes about as well as any of them could imagine, which is to say not well at all. Yuri kicks at the other boy, _Ukon_ grabs the box on top, Yuri pulls away. _Ukon_ grabs onto Yuri’s shoulder to keep him steady, Yuri knees him in the gut. They both topple over and the boxes fly everywhere.

“Well,” _Shiragiku_ mutters next to him, “at least there wasn’t anything breakable in those ones.”

It seems like he’s been forgiven. Victor will take it.

“Small miracles,” he agrees.

He wants to ask him just what is in the boxes since it seems like more than what’s usual is being dropped off, but it’s then that Georgi comes up beside him with a crate in his arms filled with potatoes and nudges Victor’s shoulder with his elbow.

“You can always help, y’know,” he says, and moves on.

He’s only teasing, Victor knows that much, but that doesn’t stop him from sticking his tongue out at him. He also ignores the small huff of laughter next to him. For one brief second of teasing his friend back and all showmanship of being a well-rounded mature adult has surely gone flying out the window.

Sounds about right.

(Victor really hopes that he can convince others that it’s the sun’s fault why his cheeks are suddenly looking pinker than usual.)

“I can help,” _Shiragiku_ says. “Georgi said there was a lot this time around when he radioed in what to expect, so, that’s good.”

He walks away, without so much as another word, and Victor follows behind with no hesitation at all. He trails after him happily, even more so at the idea that he’s grown comfortable enough around Victor and the rest of them to go ahead and invite himself into their home without any hesitation. It’s a stark contrast to the first time he came onto their base, and it’s a very encouraging thought.

“There’s potatoes this time!” Victor tells him excitedly and falls into step with him. “Georgi was able to get the seeds to take with a new compost he’d been playing around with. Oh, but now we’ve been fighting over the ashes from the fire pits, he keeps saying that’s the secret ingredient, but I think it’s the coffee grounds and he’s just more afraid of Mila than of me.”

They end up not even a foot away from the enclosed garden surrounded my planks of wood with mismatched heights made up to act as the fence, and _Shiragiku_ pauses in his step, making Victor do the same. There’s a little furrow between his brow, crinkling up that splash of gold on his face and he looks concerned.

“Do you need more wood?” he asks. “We can try to get you some, but no one mentioned that in the list–”

“No, no! No, it’s fine,” Victor assures him. “We’re fine, don’t worry about that. We still have plenty, I just like to keep my lye stock full at all times, but no, we’re okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Okay… You shouldn’t hesitate to let us know what you need out here. I mean, that's why the system was set up, y'know, we try."

He's so cute when he tries to be reassuring. It makes him a little more approachable, and Victor loves to know that he's someone that can see this side of him. He can't reptend that the look he's wearing now isn't fond when he says, “I know. Thank you.”

He’s offered a quick smile, and Victor takes it to keep with all the others that have been given to him in the time they’ve known each other. Each one of them is precious, he knows this, it’s a fact.

Victor steps ahead of him, reaching the garden’s entrance before _Shiragiku_ does and bounces on the balls of his feet as if he was a young pup waiting for his master to catch up. He pushes the gate open and ever the gentleman, holds it for the other man to go through.

Their garden is Georgi’s pride and joy.

It’s a large spread out area with rows of makeshift beds and broken off pieces of planks with scrawled on markings to tell which vegetables are which. He’s been able to grow a variety – beans, carrots, onions, beets, even corn during the hotter months. So far, the only fruit that has flourished has been a few watermelons, but it’s been awhile since the last one. Still, he’s determined to see that more begin to thrive as well.

He’s painstakingly brought the land around their base back to life through blood, sweat, and tears – with the help of everyone else, of course. When not working on other things to ensure their survival out here in the deserts, he was here tilling the soil with help from the solar stills and the different variations of composts he could put together with what they had.

Sometimes the harvest isn’t much, sometimes the seeds don’t take the composts, and sometimes the solar still are just not enough to keep the soil damp enough. They’ve been lucky to have a steady supply of what they can trade along with the laundry service, but hopefully with what they’ve gathered today, it’ll be enough to cover some future expenses through the flower chain as well as reach some of the more far out settlements in the Zones.

Georgi has filled small crates and boxes with vegetables, and left them off to the side for easy transport. Victor picks up two at a time, he buckles a little under the weight but it’s only a little heavier than the laundry equipment and he’s able to deal with it well enough. The _Shiragiku_ on the other hand, is carrying three.

“That’s not heavy for you?” Victor can’t help but ask.

The look he gets back is only slightly confused. “No? This isn’t really all that heavy?”

Again, Victor is left to trail after him in a bit of a marveled daze. If that marveled daze also happens to include watching muscles flex under the strain of carrying three loaded crates of food, that’s nobody’s business but his own.

When they do come back from the garden, it turns out that Georgi is the only one loading up the car. Yuri and _Ukon_ have picked up where Mila and Victor left off and are play fighting among the supplies.

Well, Victor is sure that _Ukon_ is play fighting, he can’t say the same in Yuri’s case.

Yuri is nearly the same as Mila: young, hot headed and grew up swinging fists. The difference is that Victor took Yuri in when he was much younger than Mila, and while he knows the ins-and-outs of a scrap, he can’t say that he has a lot of experience in always needing to fight, not the same kind of way that _Ukon_ has. It’s very much the same parallel as before, and soon Yuri is pinned to the floor, right on his belly and with the other boy holding him down.

“You’re never gonna be a part of the chain if you can’t even get a pin in,” he laughs.

“Fuck off,” says Yuri. “What makes you think I even wanna be a _flower_!”

He spits the title out of his mouth like venom, but it only makes the other boy laugh.

“That’s not what a little birdie told me,” he says, brightly. “Someone was singing a tune about all the good you can do for us and how we should get you an interview with one of the Big 3.”

“Who told you that?!”

“I just said it was a little birdie singing. Or, I guess I should say mixing? He’s not much of an actual singer, is he? Your DJ friend, I mean.”

Yuri throws _Ukon_ off with all the might in his too skinny body and launches him far enough that he nearly rolls over back to their car. Yuri stands and pulls himself upright, using every inch of his height to tower over the boy on the ground and glare at him through his curtain of hair.

“Don’t talk to my friends,” he growls out. “Don’t look at them, don’t even breathe at them, and definitely don’t listen to them.”

He sounds threatening, but this in no way keeps _Ukon_ from poking more fun at him. “You mean you have more than the one friend?”

“Oi! Stop messing around already and get back to work!” _Ichiyo_ calls out from where she is sitting under the porch awning with Mila, their medical kit opened at her feet. “You weren’t recruited to play around with your friends!”

“He’s not my friend,” Yuri growls, and stomps away.

“I thought I was making progress, now I’m just hurt,” _Ukon_ says, but gets back up and makes to help Georgi out with sorting out the packing.

“Remind me to kill Beka the next time I see him,” Yuri says to Victor as he passes him to go back to the garden.

Victor just hums. “But then who will listen to you when you start to bitch about living with us?”

Yuri doesn’t reply, not verbally. Victor does laugh at the finger he shows off without looking back.

Victor catches up with the others at the car, finally setting down the load he’s been carrying and stretches his arms out, shakes them loose. He’s prepared to go back to the garden to finish collecting the rest, but Mila and _Ichiyo_ catch his eye again. The both of them are on the same bench that Yuri had been relaxing on earlier, the medical kit still opened, but now he’s able to see that Mila’s sleeve has been rolled up and _Ichiyo_ is wrapping her up with a bandage.

“Would you mind if I went to go see what happened with Mila?” he ends up asking _Shiragiku_. “I don’t want to leave you to do all the work, even if Yuri is helping now.”

“No! That’s fine!” comes his response. “I don’t mind, it’s not a problem, whatever you need.”

Victor ends up giving him his brightest smile, not once taking in the rambles to mean anything more than _Shiragiku_ being a generous person.

With that he leaves the trade off in capable hands, and he’s walking over to the two women in no time at all. From what he can see, _Ichiyo_ has Mila’s sleeve rolled up to her shoulder, and there’s blood drying on her skin below from where there’s a bandage being wrapped around her upper arm.

“What happened, Mila?” he asks.

“ _Ichiyo_ found that gash on my upper arm from when I hurt myself fixing up the truck reopened and was bleeding out like an acid pool,” she says, all calm like she’s talking about the weather. “I didn’t even notice it until it started running down to my elbow, my shirt must’ve been soaking up the blood.”

She has been fonder of darker colors lately, and the deep green camouflage print she wears cut off above her waist but is wrapped tight around her torso and all the way down close to her elbow. It soaking up the blood is the most probable reason, even looking at it now, he can’t even tell the difference in the shading.

“How did that happen?” he can’t help but wonder aloud.

“It’s probably happened when you threw me off the lookout post.” She turns to _Ichiyo_ , all doe eyes and a jutting bottom lip. “He’s a brute like that, and it was all because I couldn’t tell him what time it was.”

“I should’ve done that for a lot of other reasons, really.”

“I would be more inclined to believe you,” _Ichiyo_ says as she puts away their medical supplies and closes the kit, “if I hadn’t seen you literally snap the neck of a Drac that tried to put you in a chokehold. If Victor did that, he’d be dead.”

Mila laughs. “Speaking of, we should do a Sunday brunch again one day!”

“Maybe, my girls do miss you.”

It’s then that she turns her head away from Mila to look at Victor, and while he doesn’t hoard her smiles in the same way he does with _Shiragiku_ ’s, there’s something fond and motherly about _Ichiyo’s_ displays of affection that he appreciates. It’s probably because she actually is a mother, but it always does make Victor miss his own.

“There’s the Drac incident,” she says, and there’s that fond smile, “and I also wouldn’t believe that because Victor isn’t capable of hurting a fly. A Drac maybe, but not a fly.”

“That’s not true, I’ve seen him catch flies with his bare hands,” says Mila. “And he eats Power Pup straight out of the can, he’s a cryptid, I say.”

“It’s not dog food,” Victor sighs. “Come on, if you’re good to go, help me bring the laundry inside.”

“It’s totally dog food,” she tells _Ichiyo_ , but follows after him all the same.

After the laundry is put inside with their traded supplies as well, and the car is packed up with their vegetables, the three flowers are huddled around the hood of their car with a heavily edited map of thte Zones and a bit of the outerlands. It’s something that they do for them; they point out all the places that are no longer safe to travel because of either gangs or checkpoints.

“There are more checkpoints along the borders of 2,” _Ukon_ is telling them and tracing along the red line that represents that border. “Only here on the westside, we think BLI might be expanding again, we’ve been hearing some stuff from News and Dr D about that since that’s close to where they’re at. We got some crash queens that have been jumping at dwellers and killjoys and robbing them along this section of Guano running into Zone 6. So, no one is happy about that, we’re trying to find out which gang it is and do something about it.”

“Anyone been ghosted?” Yuri asks.

“Not that we know of. We don’t want it to get that bad. Again.”

“No,” Mila agrees. “No, we don’t.”

“So, yeah, that’s pretty much it,” he says and pulls the map away again.

He hands it over to _Shiragiku_ for folding, and while he does that, _Ichiyo_ tells them, “We’ll have some killjoys taking out the checkpoints once we get into contact with the Grove, but if you’re going anywhere near that part of Zone 2’s border, I’d say start counting that as the start of your 48.”

“That’s not even anywhere near Battery though,” Yuri complains.

“Do you have plans to go back near Battery?” _Ukon_ asks him.

“No, fuck that. It’s just not fair, this is our land.”

“Technically, it’s nobody’s land. That’s the point.”

Yuri scoffs and says something else at him, but Victor isn’t able to hear what it is. He gets distracted by _Ichiyo_ suddenly at his side and holding out a marker in front of his face and is already talking to him.

“We’ll be back in a couple days to pick up the cleaned stuff,” _Ichiyo_ tells him and gets his signature for the trade off in the little spiral notebook she carries. “Same as always. If you guys run out of something just radio in to the Springs HQ, we’ll get it from there, the channel is still the same.”

“We should be fine, but thanks,” Victor replies. “Like always. And if you got anything that needs fixing that we can help with, the offer is the same.”

“Actually,” she says, and her smile is a little sharper, a little more conniving, and her tone is just bordering on teasing, “one of us does have something that needs fixing.”

It’s awfully quiet after that. She isn’t looking at him anymore, both her and _Ukon_ are staring at _Shiragiku_ who is taking his sweet time refolding their map up again. It makes everyone well aware, as to what the implication is here, and they all wait. They all watch him, and when he finally does look up from his work to see all these eyes on him, he’s noticeably worried.

“What?” he asks dumbly.

“Don’t you have something to ask Victor?” _Ichiyo_ prompts him.

It’s quiet again.

“…No?”

_Ukon_ reaches over to take the map and shoves him forward.

“Yes, you do,” is all he says, and _Shiragiku_ looks as if he’s just been betrayed.

_Ichiyo_ says something to him then, something that none of them understand because it’s said in the language only the trio share. Victor is nosy though, and since he’s somehow tied in with this, he really wants to know.

Whatever it is she’s said though, in that motherly tone of hers, it gets _Shiragiku_ to relax and the tension that has been surrounding him disappears a little. He doesn’t make any direct eye contact with Victor, but he does step closer to him.

“Actually,” he says and begins to shrug off his vest, “some of the flowers on the back are starting to come undone from the last firefight. Well, not the last one, but the _last_ last one. Would you be able to fix it?”

He hands the vest over the Victor, who takes it quickly and turns it over and holds it out for inspection. Sure enough, some of the chrysanthemums near the right shoulder have been singed off and snapped the thread, making it unravel and loosen the stitching all the way down. It’ll probably take a day or so to redo, but it’s an easy fix.

“This is no problem,” Victor assures him with a smile, and folds it over his arm. “I can have it ready by the next pick-up.”

“That’s great! Thank you.”

He looks relieved, as if he would be denied this one simple thing. Victor would give him anything and everything willingly, all he has to do is ask. This small request is only at the very tip of what Victor would do for this man, surely that much should be obvious.

“What’s your price?” he asks.

“Your name,” Victor says, shamelessly and still has that easy smile plastered onto his face.

(Because _Shiragiku_ is not his real name and Victor knows that much, but like all flowers, they never do go by their actual names outside of their tight-knit families and only refer to themselves by the flower they represent to strangers and even their business partners.)

(Still, Victor is always on the hunt to finding out what his name is, he has been since the beginning.)

Instead of a serious answer, his smile is only returned softly (and doesn’t that just melt his heart a little?) and he reaches into the back pockets of his jeans. Victor doesn’t know what to expect, probably a few carbons for the work, maybe a voucher for a marketplace, but it doesn’t turn out to be any of that. What the _Shiragiku_ ends up presenting is worth more to him than any of those things combined. It’s three packets that fit all in the palm of his hand, with a brand name that used to be so familiar when scanning fluorescent aisles of craft stores and designed with objects in the color it promises to recreate.

“What about these, instead?” he asks, and Victor is still staring.

Purple.

He has purple in his hands.

Victor can never really create the color on his own, he’s tried so hard with what the garden provides and with the flowers he buys, but it’s never the same shade he remembers loving so much. Now it’s right in front of him and he can’t hold back.

Suddenly, all thoughts about his goal to find out this dear man’s name are out the door because never in his life did Victor ever think that he would see anything like these again. He throws the vest over his shoulder and takes the offered packets and looks at them with sheer reverence. He holds them carefully, can’t believe they’re real.

“We were helping out with cleaning up an old complex that’s going to be reused soon out by Ragtown for the runners with kids,” he tells him. “One of them, I guess, whoever lived there before made clothes like you and I found these there. I know making bright colors is hard, and that the flowers at the Springs are expensive, so I thought maybe you would like these.”

This is how he’s going to die. Not by leftover radiation, not by dehydration or starvation, not even by a run in with a Drac or an Exterminator. His heart is going to literally beat out of his chest and motorbabies everywhere are going to hear stories about the man who literally died because his crush gave him a present.

Which is actually a payment, considering he’s going to be fixing the embroidery on his vest, but still, technicalities, it’s whatever. The point is, he saw these and thought of Victor and he’s going to die.

“There was also some other stuff in there I thought you might like. Um, there was a lot of different fabrics, so I packed as many as I could. And there was some starch and just other things that I thought you’d be able to use. So, when you go through the supplies, and you see all that, that’s what it is. Just so you know, y’know? I’m gonna shut up now.”

Forget dying, Victor is already dead and clearly existing on some other plane of existence. This is absolutely the best day of his life.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” he says, honestly. “Really, that means a lot to me.”

_Shiragiku_ only shrugs. “It’s nothing, I mean, you’re welcome, but, yeah.”

“I have to pay you back somehow,” Victor goes on to say. “Whatever you want, I’ll make it for you. Just name it.”

“It’s okay,” he tells him. “I don’t- It’s not like I wear a lot of color anyway.”

“It’s true,” _Ukon_ says. “Everything he owns is in black. Oh, except for those–”

“Those aren’t mine!” _Shiragiku_ nearly jumps at him. “They’re not, they belonged to someone else.”

“Okay, but you still wear them, so…?”

“Ohohoho,” Mila jumps in to tease. “You got some scandalous lingerie hidden at your base?”

Now that’s a thought, Victor thinks, and there’s no denying why he’s suddenly feeling flushed and Mila is whistling.

“It’s not!” he cries out and now he’s blushing, and that’s adorable. “Anyway, we should get going. We still gotta make contact with Halcyon, and that always takes a minute to get to.”

He says it to his friends more than to Victor’s crew, it’s a reminder as well as a way to get the attention of this unknown, and questionable hidden clothing. The thought of Halcyon reminds Victor though, it’s been awhile since he’s spoken to his own friend out there and he really should actually send a transmission his way. For now though, he asks them for a favor.

“Oh, if you’re going to be anywhere near the Joy-Strip there, do you mind passing a message on to Chris?” he asks. “I have the lace he’s been wanting dyed and ready, but I still need to know what I’m doing with it. Ask him to radio me when he can, I never know when he’s busy.”

“No problem,” _Shiragiku_ says, and he’s smiling again. “We actually have to visit his club, so we’ll let him know.”

“You’re going to that club?” Yuri asks. “For what?”

“That’s a secret,” _Ukon_ teases and pokes his nose. “Only a flower can know that!”

He ends up reeling backwards as Yuri swings his arm forward, laughing the whole while, but that seems to be the end of the conversation there. _Ichiyo_ nudges him towards the driver’s door and tells him to get in already, that he’s done enough playing around with his friends. Yuri doesn’t even bother to correct her with just how much of not-friends they are and shoves his hands into his pockets.

The rag-tag group of dwellers stand back as the flowers get into their car, not taking off because Victor makes the motion for a window to be rolled down. _Ichiyo_ rolls her down, and all three lean close to hear what he has to say, but his word are only really directed at _Shiragiku_.

“I’m serious about paying you back for all the supplies,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be clothes, I can make anything. Curtains, blankets, whatever you like. I’ll even use the purple you got me! You deserve that much!”

“Ask for curtains!” _Ukon_ tells _Shiragiku_. “We need new ones!”

“We don’t- okay, we kind of do, but it’s not that big of a deal,” he tells him. To Victor, he turns back to him and just shrugs and says, “We don’t really need much, we’re pretty good. And keep the purple for something special, I wouldn’t appreciate it as much as you do. It’s not really one of my favorite colors.”

“What is your favorite color?” he persists. “I’m gonna make you something whether you want me to or not, so don’t lie!”

His smile is wide and his hands are on his hips. There is absolutely no talking him out of this, he has to give this man something, he just has to.

It seems like he’s being taken seriously, because _Shiragiku_ only chuckles and looks him dead in the eye when he says, “Okay, okay. We don’t really need any clothes, but we could use a new blanket.”

“Curtains!”

“Hush up, let him alone.”

Neither one is paying attention to the other two in the car. They’re both too caught up with each other. It usually happens like that.

“But what about your favorite color?” Victor asks. “I don’t wanna make it in something you’re not gonna like.”

The _Shiragiku_ looks away then, and hesitates. It’s always like this, and it’s not like he doesn’t expect it, but that just makes it all the more surprising when he actually does answer and Victor almost misses it when he says, “Blue. My favorite color is blue.”

It takes Victor a second to understand that he’s finally gotten something personal out of this man; it’s like pulling teeth, he’s known him for maybe over two years now and still doesn’t know much. He doesn’t share anything personal like the other two, but Victor’s finally learned something new and his smile is larger than ever before and he really wishes he was a little more cleaned up than he is he must look a fool.

He tries not to think about it too hard.

“Then blue it’ll be,” he promises, and that’s that.

They all say their goodbyes then, and _Ukon_ brings the car back to life and the music as well. _Ichiyo_ yells at him to turn it down, but as far as any of them can tell, she’s ignored and the car peels out away from them, going in the same way it came. Victor is still waving away even when they’re nothing more than just a dot on the horizon.

Even when he does finally drop his arm, he’s still staring out into the distance. It’s enough to get Mila to nudge his shoulder just to see if the sun finally didn’t start to get at him.

“You okay there, boss?” Mila asks.

Victor spins on his heel, throws his arms up and grabs at the first person within reach to pull into a hug. Mila skips back a few steps and Yuri ducks down fast enough to hit the floor, leaving Georgi to be the unlucky winner.

“Why me?” he asks the sky above. “I’m a good person.”

Victor doesn’t seem to mind the rejection, he’s still reeling.

“He said he liked blue,” he swoons. “He likes blue, his favorite color is blue! Oh, do you think that means he likes my eyes?”

Yuri gags.

 

* * *

 

_“Here we are, motobabies.  Right before your very eyes as Dr Death Defying appears with the shiniest of surprises. The bag is open, the cat has jumped out, and from zone to zone you won’t want to roll without it.”_

_krrst!_

_“Stop! Listen… Thump-thump-thump… can you feel that? My blessed little heart is beating so hard with excitement I could just about taste my blood._

_“Yes, I mean to be smug when I say I got the musical wonderdrug that’ll make you wonder how you wonder how you dug anything else.”_

_krrst!_

_“What’s new is old, what’s old is new, I’ve got a playlist up and ready just for you! So, hunker down, find a nice hole, keep your neck short. Dr D’s gonna help you forget the world for a while._

_Starting… now.”_

 

* * *

 

Their work routine never changes.

Victor is the first to rise. It’s ingrained in him at this point to get up when the sun does. He’ll wash up at the basin in their living room as best as he can, rinse his mouth the best he can, and get dressed. Usually, him walking around wakes up Georgi. Georgi never was a deep sleeper, and it’s for that reason that he gets to sleep in the living room.

Just in case something approaches their shelter in the middle of the night, he’ll be the first to let them know.

Usually, Victor leaves the shelter while Georgi goes through his own routine of morning calisthenics that he claims wakes him up and keep him up. He goes out back to where they have two separated sheds – one that houses the distillery equipment and large steel pots that they use for laundry or coloring fabrics, and the other where under lock and key is all the equipment Victor uses for making patterns on cloth and yards of cloth that have already been dyed and treated and ready for trade.

Victor always brings out two pots, first thing in the morning. Sets them up over a dug-out fire pit, each one respectively and goes out to where they’ve dug their sun stills. He uses half of the water collected over from the previous day, and half the treated water from the distillery to fill up these tubs and light them up to start a boil.

Once that is set up, he’ll go back into the shelter, where Georgi is toasting up pieces of bread on their one good skillet over a small open flame and Mila is already awake and doing her best to make some coffee with the same grounds they’ve been using all week. Yuri wakes up after Victor goes to wake him up, which always involves something being flung and some mornings a near tackle that sends Victor running out of the bedroom laughing.

Yuri usually stumbles out of the bedroom, still half-dressed and plops down at their table just in time to get a plate with toasted bread, a boiled egg that’s been chilled in their ice box, and a portion of jerky that is probably just lizard meat but none of them question what’s given to them when the flowers come by with their weekly ration subscription.

“I think I’ll try to make a stew for dinner tonight,” says Georgi, who always talks about what he wants to make for dinner before their day starts. “It’s been getting a little colder after the sun goes down, it’ll be good to having something warm before bed.”

“You gonna add some of that fresh stuff?” Mila asks, but there’s a smile on her face like she’s privy to her own personal joke.

“Power Pup isn’t real dog food, y’know,” Gerogi tells her. “They only put that on the label so Dracs won’t suspect it’s real meat when the hot wagons come outta Battery.”

“Why does it smell like dog food, then?” Yuri asks, his head on the table and a piece of jerky hanging out of his mouth.

“Probably just because it’s canned,” Victor says and lifts his head up by pushing his forehead back and forcing him up. He puts a tin cup full of watered down coffee sweetened with honey in front of Yuri and smiles at the way he gulps it down. “Fresh meat doesn’t smell like that, but canned food is always different.”

The meal goes on in silence for a few beats at a time. Filling up their bellies and loading themselves up on any form of caffeine they can get their hands on is more important than small talk.

Someone always has to have the last word at some point, though.

“I still think it’s dog food,” says Mila and then shoves the rest of her egg into her mouth.

After breakfast, Mila gathers her tools and goes about the area to oversee the machinery that they use, as well as tune up their truck since it is their only means of transportation. Georgi will clean up the dishes, and gather the laundry – both their own and the clothing they’ve been hired to clean for others. Yuri usually helps Victor depending on what he’s doing; if he’s washing clothes, then he’ll grab the lye and washboards and scrub brushes and the wringer.

If Victor is going about dyeing fabrics, he usually lets him do it on his own and tends to the garden alone until Georgi comes out to help him.

(Victor doesn’t mind when he leaves him during dyeing sessions, it’s long work and it stains everywhere, he understands. He’s just grateful that when it’s time to hang the fabrics to dry, Yuri isn’t usually put off by helping that much. That’s enough.)

Today is laundry day though, so while Victor checks the flames of the pit and how hot the water is, Yuri brings out all of the equipment. They get everything set up just as Georgi brings out the sacks of laundry that will be picked up and returned in two days’ time.

“Do my clothes first,” Yuri demands. “I’m sick of my shit never being as clean as it could be.”

“You’re not a paying customer,” says Victor. “So, no.”

“Bullshit.”

“Dig your own pit.”

“Fuck you.”

“Hand me the paddle?”

Yuri does, and that’s about as far as their back and forth goes. Until there’s back splash when Yuri attempts to take a massive amount of watered down clothes to scrub down and drenches his entire upper body. It happens near every time, and Victor always laughs at him.

That’s usually when Mila walks in on Yuri chasing Victor around firepits with his own paddle and threatening to knock over everything in his path just to get to him.

“It’s a wonder anyone ever trusts us with their stuff if you can’t even do something as simple as get them out of the water,” she says and picks up where Yuri abandoned his job.

Yuri leaves to change his clothes, always coming back in the same style of tank top though it usually varies with either black or leopard print. Today is a leopard print day, and it’s a real look considering the pants he’s been wearing for the past couple of days are a very light pastel pink.

(They used to be a brighter pink, and they used to be Mila’s, but they fit comfortably and Yuri will fight someone who dares talk shit. Hardly anyone ever does, though. It’s not like anybody cares.)

Mila’s already scrubbing the heartier stains out using a small tub and a washboard, and Victor keeps the water boiling, adding more lye with every new batch of clothing. Once Yuri joins back in, the process goes faster, and before long Georgi is bringing out a lunch that is basically just a platter of more jerky, bread, and some vegetables that were ready to be picked and rinsed off.

“I think I could probably make a borscht tonight,” he tells them after they settle down on the wooden bench pressed against the front of their shelter and underneath the small bit of roof hanging over to keep them out of the sun. “The beets are ready and there are a lot of them.”

“I haven’t had borscht in so long!” Mila says. “My momma used to make the best, like, no offense Georgi, I’m sure you’re great, but my momma was the shiniest cook in the world!”

“My grandpa didn’t like beets so we never ate that,” says Yuri. “He made amazing pirozhki, though.”

“I never had pirozhki,” Victor whines. “It was always one of those things that I kept telling myself that I was going to eat, and then never did.”

“You missed out, old man. They were the best damn thing on earth and if I had to miss something from Before, they would definitely be top five.”

“I miss cheese,” says Georgi. “And sour cream. I miss milk.”

“Okay, but same,” Victor agrees. “I loved cheese.”

“I don’t remember what cheese tastes like,” says Yuri. “But I remember liking pizza.”

“Oh, my god!” Mila cries out. “I miss pizza!”

“You can still get all that in Battery,” says Victor. “I think where my first place was got turned into a pizza place. I can’t really remember, I didn’t hang around for too long the last time I went back since it was already the last of my 48.”

“Like I’m gonna willingly walk back into that hell hole for what’s probably some shit pizza,” says Yuri, and angrily bites into a carrot. “Fuck BLI.”

“Fuck BLI!” Mila shouts with him, and they both dissolve into a chanting mess.

“It’s funny,” Georgi says to Victor, because the other two are not paying attention to them anymore. “Some people would say that we’re living in the hell hole.”

“Well,” says Victor, “better hell than purgatory.”

After lunch, they finish the customers’ laundry, with Georgi helping out after he cleans up and they get everything wrangled and hung up to dry. The four of them do their own laundry together, and it takes all four of them to do the clean up since they can’t afford to just dump all the water they’ve used.

Georgi is the first to go back inside, he tells them that he’s going to start on the borscht and Victor asks him to leave him a fair amount of beets because he has an order for a red fringe dress from Zone 6 that he needs to start tomorrow.

“We better be getting some actual carbons for that,” Yuri complains and pulls his long, blond hair up. The sweat on his brow is visible, and he’s looking pink in the cheeks. They all are, Victor’s sure of it.

“Why are you complaining?” Victor asks him. “I’m the one that’s going to be doing most of the work.”

“Whatever, I know I’m gonna be the one to make the fringe since you’re going to be working on that fucking _flowers_ ’s vest. And I saw those designs she came up with, so I know it’s gonna take a good chunk of my life.”

“I’ll do it,” says Mila. “I can use more practice with stitching.”

“No, I’m gonna do it, go find something to hit with your hammer.”

The sun goes down by the time everything gets syphoned and rinsed and collected, they’re a sweaty mess and ready to eat again. Georgi meets them by the door with a tin cup full of coldish water for each of them and reminds all of them to wash up the best they can.

It’s several long minutes of each one of them swearing at each other and bumping each other over in front of the water basin before any of them can actually sit at the table again for the last meal of the day.

“Pretty good, Gerogi,” says Mila through a mouthful of vegetables and canned meat. “But not as good as my momma’s!”

“You should be thankful that Georgi cooks for us at all,” Victor scolds her. “After all that work, I never wanna actually make something, I’d be eating Power Pup out of a can for days.”

“Yeah,” says Yuri. “But you like dogs so that’s not saying much.”

Mila howls with a laugh and Victor throws his scrap of a napkin straight at Yuri’s face.

They light some candles after dinner (they don’t want to use up their battery supply for the lanterns they’ve hooked up), and finally take some time of the day to just sit together and relax, for the most part. Victor ends up in the corner with all of his strands of beads and needles and other bits and pieces and is showing Yuri the difference between threading a whole strand and individual beads. Mila is playing with the radio, trying to catch the ending of WKIL’s broadcast and hoping to hear a traffic report and Georgi is scribbling in a half-destroyed notebook he had found during a scavenging trip.

“Georgi,” says Mila after she’s found the station and holds her hands out to him. “Georgi, come dance with me! It’s been so long since I’ve been to a show and I need to dance!”

“Hold on,” he tells her. “I just want to get these thoughts down before they slip away from me.”

“Work on your poetry later, come on and dance with me!”

“My soul is burdened down by the weight of living, Mila, just gimme a minute.”

Neither Victor or Yuri pays them any real mind, as Yuri is focused on threading and knotting individual beads under Victor’s supervision, trying to make some semblance of a flower to start off with. They hardly notice when Georgi and Mila finally take each other’s hands and shuffle around the small living room together. They keep dancing for as long as the broadcast keeps going, only stopping to listen to the good Dr Death Defying give his nightly traffic reports and take some calls from other desert dweller listeners.

“This looks like shit,” says Yuri. He knots off the thread he’s been working with and snaps it off. “You can say it.”

“I’m not gonna lie and say it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s your first one,” Victor tells him, and takes the cloth away from him to inspect it. “I wasn’t always so great at this either, y’know. When I started, mine looked a lot worse than this, and this isn’t even that bad.”

“How bad was yours?”

“Awful. No, it was terrible. Granted, I was only about 10 when I started so you have a better advantage on me, there.”

“No, that just means that you’ve had more time to get better, and that I need to get better _faster_.”

“It was a different time, then, Yuri,” Victor reminds him. “I had the luxury of starting early, it’s not the same.”

It’s not the same, he thinks again after their conversation is interrupted by Mila announcing that their teaching/learning time is over and pulls Yuri out to dance with her against his will.

When he chose his career path all those years ago, it was because he had dreams that involved lit up run-ways and glamourous photo shoots. He thought that by the time he’d hit 30 he would be living in a fabulous pent house with a new trophy boyfriend to dote on every other month and wearing designer wear for the rest of his days.

He didn’t think that he would end up here, in the middle of a labeled deserted wasteland with three other people he would not have met in his previous life, living in an overly-large, weather-beaten shack that’s just strong enough to keep the wind and acid rain at bay, sleeping in a cramped off room that holds two small mattresses and a salvaged cot they insist Yuri sleep on since he’s the youngest.

He thought that his fashion would hang off the lithe frames of supermodels, not the scraggly looking killjoys, crash queens, and motorbabies that find him through word of mouth and bright smiles because they hear he’s the one that can make the wildest creations come to life.

He didn’t think that his embroideries and bead work would belong to a whole networked gang named after _flowers_ of all things, but here he is, and this is what’s happened.

Still, watching the three of them twirl around each other to music that is more often overlapped with static now that the broadcast is ending, he finds himself laughing at the fight Yuri puts on, and the way Georgi moves just fine of his own since Mila abandoned him. He doesn’t even hesitate when Mila throws Yuri away and drags him in too, he goes right along with it and spins her around with him, watches her throw her head back and look like the young woman she is.

No, there is no real reason to mourn over expectations that could never come true now. Not when he has this, not when there’s so much more to living and surviving now.

This can be enough.

Eventually, the fun dies down and the good Doctor is saying his goodnights when Mila and Yuri disappear to go to bed. Georgi starts getting ready for bed and asks Victor if he’s going to do the same.

“Just gonna clean up a little first,” he tells him. “I’ll get out of your way, don’t worry.”

“It takes me awhile anyway,” says Georgi. “To fall asleep, I mean, take your time.”                                               

All the same, Victor does his best to clean up the beads quickly. He puts them away, along with the thread and the needle Yuri had been using. He picks up the cloth and studies the rough pattern of the flower; it’s simple and in some spots it’s too tight and in others it’s too loose, but it’s a vast improvement to when Yuri had first started.

Maybe one day, he can help Victor recreate the last gown he had once dreamt up so many years ago…

He blows out the candle by his work station and wishes Georgi a goodnight and a smile. He ducks into the side room and steps around where Mila is sprawled out on her mattress and strips his shirt off before crawling into his own nest of blankets.

There’s a vision of deep blue tulle and taffeta, with sheer sleeves and dripping pearls that dances before his eyes. It’s as clear in his mind, like it was only this morning that he picked up his tools and began beading those flowers straight onto the bodice of his project and his fingers clench around a needle that isn’t there.

It would’ve been great, he thinks before falling asleep. It’s a shame that he never got to bring it to life, because it would have been great.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> several things:
> 
> -i love the danger days era. i have lived through every era, participated in every era, was a devout member of the mcrmy and i will always say danger days is my favorite era
> 
> -most (at least 95%) of this world building is from old rp's from 2010-2014. a lot of aspects of it are not "canon". the flower chain was an original idea, the towns and landmarks are original, basically this is gonna read more like a bunch of old headcanons based on the transmission videos than the comics
> 
> (because i love gerard way, he is my father and my mother, but i have a lot of questions when it comes to killjoys)
> 
> -this is also going to read like a novel. there is set up and world building, and i'm not gonna lie, actual romantic like interaction doesn't happen until the madd gear concert and that is... some thousand words away. so if you wanna hit the red line and kick up dust with me on this ridiculous journey of a fic, take my fucking hand and never be afraid again
> 
> (that was a lyric from bullets, but you're gonna see a bunch of lyrics throughout this fic ngl)
> 
> -there is a playlist that i've been adding to and listening to nonstop for the past several months on spotify
> 
> -tbh i have several thousand (up to 60k words) written but i don't know exactly how long it's going to be, i just know that i want to update on the first of every month at midnight until jan 1 2019 because i enjoy being dramatic and it's my artistic expression
> 
> -i love to talk about this verse, i love to answer questions, i love to divulge in backstories and i have several written but not all of them may be published - don't hesitate to leave me messages because again danger days is my favorite era
> 
> -last, but certainly not least, thank you for making it this far, for reading, even if you don't care for it and will never come back, i appreciate the attention. so thanks, keep running, and stay shiny xoxo


	2. Angels Made From Neon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I got one. What's black and white and red all over?"  
> "The last Drac that tried to get between my radio waves and eardrums, next!"  
> "...It's still a good joke."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bullet list of major killjoy communes and their inhabitants
> 
> -Ragtown (location Zone 5): started off as a diesel town, inhabited by mostly dragsters, and steel Junkies. innovated and produces car parts, mechanics, and engineers. steadily becoming THE city to live in with many families settling down.  
> -Halcyon (location Zone 5 *i labeled it as Hyper-Thrusts on the map... whoops*): more of a bunch of Joy-Strips* than an actual community located on a higher elevation and hidden by some of the only remainder of green plantlife in the zones.  
> a lot of bars, casinos, juke joints, dance and droid clubs are here  
> -The Springs (location Zone 5): more of a marketplace than an actual city. bin-rats sell flowers, potteries, textiles, scrap metal, anything they can get a hold on or create or produce and live in their stalls in some form of post-modern suburbia.  
> -The Grove (location Zone 6): ink rats, roller rulers, burners, and punk rock kids addicted to the hype of guitar static live here. mostly the creative types that create murals, music, and magic. art is the weapon, imagination is their ammunition.
> 
> *Joy-Strips are like plazas. a strip of businesses/homes that cater to miscellaneous needs and entertainment. Hyper-Thrusts is part of a three-business Joy-Strip in Halcyon, but we'll get to that.  
> **Killjoys for hire are mostly found in the Grove or Ragtown. Crash Queens, Drooges, Motorbabies usually tend to keep to their gangs and form their own exclusive communes. Some are friendly, some are hostile. Depends on the lunar cycles.

_crackle crackle_

_"Whew, I love that song! Last time I heard a bomb drop like that, we lost Texas! Makes me think back to the Helium Wars…”_

_krrst!_

_“I was young, fit, badass… turning sand into glass with a laser blast. My unit was glad I hurt my leg – left more asses for them to kick.”_

_hiss!_

_krrst!_

_“That war was not easy on any of us. We never got out fair shake. Sometimes I wonder how many brothers strapped on a draculoid mask. Sometimes I wonder if they even had a choice…”_

_"This one goes out to all my brothers. **All** my brothers."_

_..._

_..._

_hiss!_

_'.[..I see a red door and I want it painted black...'](https://youtu.be/-YJIvuTWGQw)_

 

* * *

 

Victor can’t remember a lot of things. He needs Yuri to keep track of orders if there’s every more than three at a time. Code names slip his mind, and if he’s honest, killjoy matters don’t matter much to him anymore, so he has no need to ever think about what goes between gangs or the flower chain. This is just common knowledge.

For all that he can’t remember, there are things that he does. He remembers clean sheets, because he misses them so much. Shower access, farmer’s markets, streets filled with fabric shops and hot dog venders. He can tell you stories about his life from the Before, but if you were to ask him how it got like this, he can’t tell you a thing.

Because as he considers the small desert battles now, politics didn’t involve him, so he never cared to remember how everything spiraled out of control.

Victor doesn’t even remember the day it finally happened – though that’s probably because it’s been so long, but he thinks it happened during the summertime. He remembers the windows were open and his hair was pulled up high. He remembers that it was a hot day and the A/C was broken.

What he remembers the most, though, is the feel of the taffeta between his fingers and the way his embroidery hoop dug into his palm and the way the beaded pearls popped against the dark blue and the way the thread sounded while going through the fabric as he painstakingly worked them to form the most intricate flower pattern he’s ever drawn out.

He remembers being close to finishing this one off, number ten out of the hundreds he wanted to place all on this gown, and he remembers that he pushes the needle back up through the fabric and stabs his thumb hard enough for blood to swell and stain the pearls closest to the wound…

That’s when the building shakes.

That’s when the _boom_ hits.

That’s when the windows crack and he leaves his seat to look at what has happened.

His thumb is in his mouth, the blood tasting like sharp metal flowing over his taste buds, and peers out at the city streets. There are people running, some scattered on their bellies, thrown about from the force of whatever has happened and then the siren starts blaring. That’s when he stops staring down at the street below and up at the sky.

Out in the distance, there’s a looming cloud. He can only see the top of it, that infamous mushroom shape he’s been warned about – what they’ve all been warned about – and he can see the reddened sky above it. It’s too close to his own home. Far away that he may just have enough time to seek shelter, but it’s still too close to his liking.

He falls back when a sudden burst of light blinds him and the entire Earth shakes…

After that…

Well…

“Nice job!”

In the present, Victor’s hands are stained a bright green with black dye drying out underneath his nails. He’s just finished wrangling out the extra water of the fabric he’s painted a pattern on for a regular customer. Said customer has asked for a neon zebra print because of an old pack of gum that they had found on Tommy’s shelves and would trade a half-crate of rechargeables that was taken from a hot wagon coming out from Battery. There was no way he was going to refuse that.

Mila steps up to him, takes a closer look at the fabric once it’s hanging on the line to dry out.

“Are you gonna make something for them too?” she asks. “Or just the dye job?”

“They wanted leggings,” Victor answers. “I don’t have the elastic for it, so I offered to make some skinny pants and they were happy with that. Besides, this isn’t the right material for leggings, it wouldn’t have worked anyway.”

“Well, it’s still shiny,” Mila compliments, and takes the cloth between her fingers. “Have I told you that I love it when you make the patterned stuff? We’re lucky to have you out here with us, none of us would look as good as we do without you.”

“Naturally” Victor says, a too large smile on his face. “I’m the best there is! Sometimes though, I wait for the day that killjoys just start to grab at whatever they can cos it’s easier than waiting for us to make up something.”

“It could happen with some of the lazier ones, but let’s face it crash queens are too uppity to deal with bin rats when they wanna look shiny and new. As the former number one Desert Queen of Zone 3, I know that’s a fact.”

Victor tilts his head and hums. “Is that right?”

“Yup!”

The smile she gives him is a bright one that lifts the mood he hadn’t even realized fell over him. Mila’s good at that; she’s good at reading the atmosphere and while her more chaotic loving nature has her cause more drama than dispel it, she’s an asset to keeping Victor level-headed just by knowing when he’s going into an episode.

Despite their bickering, he’s glad that she followed them out here.

“It’s too bad that you can’t make any florals,” she sighs. “I remember when I was seven or eight, my momma bought me this really cute dress that was basically a denim top and a long pink floral skirt on the bottom. I would love to wear something like that again.”

“I mean, technically I could. It’s not like I haven’t done florals before.”

“Yeah, but that was for _flowers_. Not for like, the rest of us tumbleweeds.”

There are technically no rules out in the Zones, that’s the point, but there are some unspoken agreements:

  1. Always have a mask on you – Runner, Dweller, Joy, Queen, Baby, doesn’t matter, keep your mask on you because when it’s time to die, you need to have it on.
  2. The Mailbox is the only altar for the Phoenix Witch and is not to be messed with. Even if you don’t believe in her, no one messes with the Mailbox.
  3. Only Flowers can wear flowers. Whatever the form. Fabric petals shaped into their designated code name and fashioned into headbands or barrettes, jewelry, embroideries, patterned clothing, face paints, whichever and whatever.



It’s a way for them to be recognized and spotted. A way for them to be identified if things go sour.

It was a way _Iris_ had been identified – a beautiful man with a penchant for silks and suede when they came his way and was always asking for brighter shades from Victor that just could never be accomplished with his limited supplies. He asked for several bead iris pieces that he could weave into his hair and wear like his own brand of constellations surrounding him. When they found him, there was nothing left from the charred wreckage other than those same beads that had clung onto the blood matted mop of hair that once shined golden under the desert sun and was now stained and marked with death.

So, no, they couldn’t wear florals. Not if they want to be mistaken for an actual _fl_ _ower_ , and considering how all flowers are on BLI radar much like their more notorious Killjoy counterparts, no one is that vain enough to take that much of a chance.

Everyone else in the desert has the option of staying under the radar, regardless of what they do. And everyone knows a flower when they see one.

“Sometimes I think I should have joined them,” Mila says. “Y’know, _Sunflower_ herself came up to me and asked if I wanted to rev it up with them.”

Victor is taken aback by this revelation; he has never heard this before or even suspected anything like this to have happened.

“What?” he asks, and his face must show his surprise.

“Yeah!” Mila laughs. “Like, a few months before you all found me, I guess there was a clap with some Crows over by the Sierras and she was recruiting after some of her own were ghosted. I was having fun not having to worry about anyone but myself though, so I brushed her off. Now that I think about it though, I was pretty rude, she’s actually really nice. But you know that already.”

The thing is, Victor could imagine Mila as a flower, if he thinks about it. Maybe not when he first met her - she was a bit more of a hassle before she fell into every day domesticity with the lot of them, but now that’s she’s matured more and understands that life out here isn’t just one continuous party, she would be good at it. She has all the qualifications: she’s quick, she has good aim, she’s sharp, and she’s beautiful.

That last bit might be an unofficial qualification, but it’s something Victor has noticed with every flower he’s outfitted. Every one of them is beautiful, but he might be biased.

It’s not like he could ever deny thinking of one _particular_ flower when he lists these qualifications, after all.

 

* * *

 

_“Just like dying, crying, and multiplying, here’s another thing that everyone’s got to deal with once in a while. Here’s a word from our sponsors.”_

_krrst!_

_“Let’s see here…”_

_krrst!_

_Tommy Chow Mein is setting up shop next to the Sun Valley Hospital Fire. He wants y’all to know he’s giving 50 percent off all lead-based projectles and interrogation devices. And with every purchase of 5 guns or more, he’ll even let you slide on the 5 minute waiting period…”_

 

* * *

 

There was once a Joy-Strip turned Commune not that far away from Zone 1’s border that Victor inhabited with other traders. Tommy Chow Mein – an older man who was probably only hitting his 30’s at the time, and was well-known for always wearing the same blue suit and for being a shrewd trader – was next door to his shop, which was nothing more than a little store front maybe about only the size of his first and only studio apartment that had a curtained off section where he kept a sleeping bag and a trunk full of his own clothes. He never knew Tommy all too well, for all the time that they knew each other. They went back and forth with trading goods, news, and services, but their relationship was strictly cordial and professional.

There wasn’t any bad blood between them until Yuri showed up.

Yuri, a 13 year-old motorbaby running with one group of crash queens after another just to make it by had been loitering too long for Tommy’s liking in his shop. True to both of their natures, it didn’t take long for some kind of fight to actually break out.

“Cut the static and tell me what you’re hanging around here for,” Victor had heard Tommy shout at the kid when returning home from collecting a payment just on the other side of the strip. “I find out you’ve been lifting from my shop, I’m gonna stuff you in the Mailbox for the Witch to collect herself!”

“You get off on threatening a kid, you goddamn bin rat?”

Victor ends up poking his head through the open doorframe, looking inside and seeing this blond kid dressed in red pants and an oversized black hoodie doing his best to stand toe-to-toe with Tommy himself despite being several inches shorter. He keeps his hands hidden away in the hoodie’s front pocket, and it’s something that Tommy keeps eyeballing during the whole altercation.

“What’s in the pockets?” Tommy demands.

“None of your business,” says the kid. “I didn’t do nothin’, and I didn’t take nothin’, so shove off.”

He pushes past the older man, hits him with his shoulder on the way out, but not fast enough. Tommy grabs his shoulder, forces him to turn around and the kid pulls his hands out of his hoodie with a bright yellow Individual and aims it just as Tommy pulls his own blue one from his holster. It’s all Victor needs to see before he ends up scrambling into the shop before anything could escalate even further.

(He doesn’t want to think that Tommy would hurt a child, but it’s not like he knows him well, and the bits that he has gotten to know… well… no one could blame him for thinking he would.)

“Hey, hey, now,” he calls out and skids out in the middle between the two. “Well, this is pretty exciting, isn’t it? I see you met my little brother here, Tommy! He’s quite a troublemaker, but he never means anything by it.”

He hears the kid behind him splutter, but doesn’t pay him much mind. His attention is focused on Tommy, who is still aiming his Individual even though it’s directly in Victor’s path now. He’s staring at Victor like he’s just burst in here saying he was going to be marrying a Drac and moving back into Battery.

“Little brother?” asks Tommy, and there really is no hiding the doubt in his tone.

“Yeah!” Victor says, still pretending like there isn’t a weapon just an inch away from his chest. “You know, kids these days, always coming and going and they like to give their families grief.”

“Who the fuck are you?” the kid sneers.

Tommy levels him a stare, but Victor does not back down.

“Oh, yeah, sure,” says Tommy, but he begins to lower his Individual all the same. “Yeah, I can see the real resemblance here.”

The smile on Victor’s face doesn’t fall at all. He carries on as if nothing has been said by the kid behind him and pushes the barrel of the kids Individual down lower and takes his arm in hand.

“Right?” he near laughs. “It’s near uncanny, ha ha! Well, I’m gonna take him home now, so.. see you around!”

He drags the kid right out of the shop, using all his strength to keep the kid from squirming out of his hold as he hauls them back into Victor’s own.

Victor doesn’t really let him go until he’s closed his shop’s doors and put up the crude ‘CLOSED’ sign in the dirty window to keep everyone from coming in.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?!” the kid screams at him. “You think you can just kidnap –”

“That was a close one,” Victor interrupts the kid and finally looks at him.

He’s scrawny and can’t be any older than 11 (and it was a real surprise when he did learn how old he was, what a wonder malnutrition and living alone in the desert will do) with bright blond hair chopped wildly around his face and a splatter of freckles underneath his green eyes. He gets the feeling that the scowl on his face is a permanent fixture, but that gets brushed off to. Things like that just happen.

“I don’t know if Tommy would really shoot you,” he goes on to say, “but I don’t think that’s something you would have liked to have found out.”

The kid doesn’t say anything, he’s just staring at him, Individual still gripped limply in his hand and eventually doesn’t do anything more than stare around the shop.

Again, it isn’t much. Out of all the leftover buildings on the Strip, Victor lucked out with the smallest of them all. It’s just big enough to hang up some fabric on the wall and keep a sewing machine in the corner that’s been downgraded to work with an actual pedal. He’s had to scavenge wood to board up the far wall, since that had been taken out during the war most likely, and the front windows are cracked to hell and perpetually musty, but it’s something to house him, and it’s worked fine.

This kid isn’t making too bad of a face, so it’s probably the nicest little bit of shelter he’s been in for a while.

“So…” Victor starts off and readily finds that he has no idea what to do now. “I don’t know what to do with kids, I’ve never had any and never wanted any, but, I don’t know… Are you hungry? You want something to eat.”

“No!” he near shrieks, and Victor is well on letting him have his way, but his stomach lets out a rumble so fierce that it’s like there’s a little lion living inside the kid.

He can’t help but take the opportunity to tease him by saying, “I think your gut disagrees with what your mouth is saying.”

The kid doesn’t say anything, but his eyes are narrowed and his mouth pulls even further down into a deeper scowl and Victor blows right by him. There’s a small cabinet underneath his machine where he keeps a bunch of granola bars and other food stuffs that will last. He reaches into it and takes out a bar at random.

“Here,” he calls out and throws it at the kid. “It’s old, but it’s still pretty good.”

The kid catches it, but he doesn’t do much then stare at it while turning it over in his hands, as if the wrinkled wrapper is going to say anything different than what it is. Victor takes one out for himself and tears open the wrapper without much thought. He bites into it and doesn’t even flinch at how stale the bar is.

(After living off hard tack and powdered gruel in the government safe zones for so long, stale granola bars are a god send.)

He can feel the kid watching him, and that’s fine with him. He’s probably still wary of the unwarranted hospitality that Victor is showing him, and he can understand that. Not everyone in the Zones is a terrible person doing things for selfish reasons, but they are here, and there’s plenty.

“You always need a water chaser,” he says to break the silence. “They’re so dry by now, but not moldy, so still good, I guess.”

There’s a gallon of water that he keeps on a high shelf behind him. With it are a small jar that’s been cleaned out and a chipped mug missing its handle, along with a mismatched set of silverware that consists of nothing more than two spoons and a dulled knife. He can feel the kid watching him poor water into the small jar and drink from it, and even still when he finishes it off and pours more into it.

“You want some?” he asks, and extends the jar out for him to take.

It’s like watching a stray cat approach someone with a can of tuna from across the road. The kid inches closer, but without ever really taking his eyes off of Victor. The granola bar goes into the hoodie’s pocket, and he can hear it knock against the Individual that was put back in there with every step he takes, but Victor still doesn’t move. Not even an inch.

When he’s close enough, the kid snatches the jar right out of Victor’s hands and scuttles back. The way he gulps it down and then decides he can trust the granola bar and tears through the wrapper to get to the food. It makes Victor smile, and then smile even wider with the way he thrusts the jar back at him in a silent demand for more water.

Oh, kids, these days…

“You can hang around here if you want,” Victor offers after giving him a refill. “No one really comes in when the sign’s up, so if you want to let Tommy cool down from whatever that was before leaving, you’re more than welcome to stay.”

“Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“Well, it’s better to be in here instead of being out in the sun, and I do have food and water.”

“I already told you I wasn’t hungry.”

And just like before, his stomach lets out a loud growl. It seems like the granola bar only did more harm than good, and is letting it be known that this kid is still very much hungry.

“Well, that’s that, in any case,” Victor laughs. “I don’t mind, it’s been so long since I’ve had anyone over for dinner. What’s your name?”

The kid looks at him oddly, brows furrowed, and lip curled. He does answer him though.

“Puma Tiger Scorpion.”

Victor blinks. He must have heard that wrong.

“What was that?”

“I said, Puma Tiger Scorpion.”

Victor stares at him.

He doesn’t understand these kids and their desert names, but it’s not like this is the weirdest one he’s ever heard. There was that one named something like Platypus Venom Bot, but still... That’s a mouthful...

“I’m gonna call you ‘Kitten’,” he says with a tone of finality, and the kid instantly bristles.

“My name is Puma Tiger Scorpion, you dense slice of angel food!”

The insult rolls right off of him, he’s heard much worse thrown at everyone and anyone. If anything, hearing this kid spit them out is more amusing than anything else.

Between this moment and putting out dinner, Victor is able to coax some information out of him. Apparently, the kid had been roaming around Zones 2 and 3 with a small group of Joys that left him for dead after coming down with a sickness. What that sickness was, he doesn’t really know, but they were afraid that it was the infamous “Zone Sickness” that killed off so many in the beginning and didn’t want to stick around to find out.

Once he pulled himself out of it long enough to drag himself out onto Route Guano, he was picked up by a death tech heading north. Maybe it’s because he was just a kid, or maybe she could recognize that he wasn’t just another wavehead soaking up the leftover radiation, but she pitched camp and took him in, letting him heal and giving him something for the dehydration. He ran off as soon as he could, before she could ask for any kind of payment that he couldn’t afford.

Then he ended up here.

“So, you were going to steal from Tommy,” is all at Victor says.

“I was looking around to see if there was anything worth working for,” the kid bristles again – he’s a bristly one. “I don’t fucking steal.”

Victor only hums. It’s not like he doesn’t want to believe him, but people do all sorts of things just to survive.

“Well, it also sounds like you don’t have anywhere to sleep tonight. You can stay here if you want.”

Again, the kid only gives Victor the same wary look he’s been giving him all day. Not that Victor minds, the kid is still pretty easy to read, he doesn’t think he has much to worry about.

“What d’you want from me?” he ends up asking.

“Nothing,” Victor says, earnestly, but does laugh at the unimpressed look he’s given. “I mean it, I don’t want or need any kind of payment. If you need a place to stay, there’s space for you to lie down. It just doesn’t seem right to kick you out with nowhere to go and no supplies.”

That scowl is back.

“That’s sketchy as fuck.”

“Is it really?” Victor laughs. “Well, yes, I suppose it is. Even before all this, I suppose that would be too.”

Victor looks directly at him then, claps his hands together, and says, “Well, take it as you will, I guess. What other options are there, right?”

The kid stares at him, then down at the card table they’ve been sitting at for their dinner which consisted of nothing more than another granola bar and a tin of mystery meat with a ‘Power Pup’ label each. He pokes at a glob of it with the dulled out knife he’s been given and makes a face at the jelly texture sliding everywhere.

“I mean,” he says, “if someone had told me that my two options today were being ghosted by some old fucker with his blaster and eating dog food out of a can, I’d’ve just let him dust me then and there.”

It’s Victor’s turn to give him a look, the corner of his mouth pulling down into a frown and says, “Power Pup isn’t dog food.”

“It literally fuckin’ says Power Pup on the tin. The fuck is it, then?”

“Not important.”

“It is, when it’s fuckin’ dog food.”

“Do you want a place to stay or not?”

The question itself shuts him up, makes him look out that dingy, cracked window and at the fading sunlight. His eyes narrow, and it’s like Victor can see the wheels turning in his head. It doesn’t really surprise him too much when the kid finally looks back at him and asks him where he sleeps.

He doesn’t know why hearing him give in to his invite makes him feel as giddy as it does. Maybe it’s because Victor’s always wanted to take in a stray to combat the loneliness, or maybe it’s just that the kid is the only form of entertainment he’s had in literal ages. Either way, it’s not anything too big of a thought that he has to deal with now, and shoves those thoughts away while helping set the kid up with a makeshift bed out of some oversized jackets and unthreaded burlap sacks.

He even lets him use what little toothpaste he has when it comes time to wash up before bed. There’s just something about seeing someone so young marvel at the sight of the curled tube and at the feel of his teeth afterwards that is just so amusing. Very sad, and very amusing.

When the kid settles down for the night and turns his back when Victor says his goodnights, he didn’t expect much more than that. He only chuckles at the action and closes his curtain to lie down on his sleeping bag. He’s staring at the ceiling, and just before sleep takes him, wonders how the night will go.

Which is to say, it goes about as well as Victor expected it to.

It’s probably past midnight when he first hears the rustling. Victor’s never been one to sleep lightly, but after years of having to always be on his guard for fear of being mugged or murdered, it’s a little harder to sleep soundly. Even when living in a Joy-Strip, no one is ever really _safe_.

So, he lays still on his sleeping bag for the time being. Waiting.

He hears the cabinet being opened. He hears the little bit of food that he’s stashed being grabbed and shoved into something, probably a spare canvas bag he has lying about, and he hears the clinking of the silverware. He gets up just in time to hear the other drawers of his desk being opened and rummaged through.

He smirks to himself before he moves the curtains aside slowly, as to not make any noise. He smirks because maybe this kid was telling the truth. Maybe he doesn’t actually steal, because he’s doing a right shit job of it now. He’s way too noisy.

And he doesn’t pay any attention. His back is turned to Victor, and like he thought, there is a spare canvas bag in his hand land already filled with food and who knows what else. He’s probably scavenging for some form of money, or something he could trade. He’s gonna have a hard time finding anything, it’s not like Victor has much to take.

“There aren’t any carbons,” he says and startles the kid that he hears his knee hit the opened drawer and makes him swear something fierce.

He spins around, stares at Victor with wide eyes and doesn’t move an inch. His face is pale and his hand gripping on to the sack shakes a little. He would laugh at the idea of anyone being afraid of him if the situation itself wasn’t so serious.

“You can take what you think will get you far,” Victor tells him. “But I don’t really have all that much outside of sewing supplies and some clothes. You might be able to trade some thread to a death tech, but I can’t imagine you’d get anything that great in exchange.”

He still doesn’t reply, and frankly, Victor doesn’t know if what he would say would matter much. It’s obvious that this is a robbery gone wrong, and he expected that, he’s not going to lie. A person can only expect so much when they take in a stray, but he did it anyway.

“Just make sure the door’s closed all the way on your way out,” Victor waves him off and turns his back.

It’s a dismissal, and that’s the end of it. He closes his curtain and is just about ready to get back into bed when suddenly it’s ripped open again, and the kid is grabbing his arm, forcing him to turn around, and is absolutely looking livid.

“The fuck is wrong with you!” the kid screams at him. “I was just gonna rob you and run and you tell me to close the door tight on the way out?! Are you fucking crazy?!”

Victor shakes his arm off, pushes him away to give himself back his personal space and stands with his hands on his hips, eyes narrowed and frowning.

“What did you want me to say?” Victor asks. “Did you want me to ask you why you were doing this? Try to guilt you for looting after giving you a meal and a place to sleep? What would any of that have done? You’re old enough to know what you’re doing, even if what you’re doing is extremely stupid and may get yourself killed, but you’re hardly young enough to keep calling yourself a motorbaby.”

“Stay or go,” he tells him with a careless wave of his hand. “I can’t tell you what to do. I can offer you a place to stay, and to ask you to close the door behind you, but I can’t do anything else. The rest is up to you.”

He closes the curtain, but he doesn’t move. He stands in silence, and he’s able to hear the kid’s breathing and scuffle of his shoes, the sound of the canvas sack falling and the steps it takes to get to the door. The door opens. It slams. Victor sighs, deeply.

That’s that, then. He lies back down, and waits for sleep to come again.

The next day, Victor wakes up and he hears shuffling. That gets him sitting up right, and groping for the purple Individual by his nest. He doesn’t know who’s in his store, but if the kid left last night, then it’s clearly someone else that thought they could just come in and go through his things.

He checks the battery and makes sure it’s full and powers it up. He stands and pulls the curtain back, his Individual aimed and ready to go.

The kid is standing there, right in front of Victor’s hot plate and holding his scavenged coffee pot, steaming. He’s staring at Victor, wide eyed, and Victor is pretty much the same. He lowers his Individual, breathes out through his nose, and watches the kid pour some of that too light looking coffee into the chipped mug. He sets it down.

“I made coffee,” he says and nudges the mug closer to the edge of the table, right across from Victor.

At first Victor doesn’t say anything, he’s surprised, if he’s honest. He takes careful steps towards the mug and lifts it up, takes in the aroma of it, and then takes a sip.

It’s terrible.

“This is terrible.”

“Fuck you.”

And that’s how it goes. Victor finds himself with a stray named Yuri, only learning his name after going a whole day with either calling him ‘Kid’ or ‘Kitten’ because he just can’t bring himself to say the name Puma Tiger Scorpion seriously.

Yuri hangs around the shop most of the time, watching as Victor works and asks him a few questions every now and again. When Victor offers to show him how to sew and mend tears, he declines at first, but after another day or so of doing nothing more than running errands for him, Yuri eventually asks to be taught something to be more useful.

The lessons he teaches him are all simple; they’re all things that he was taught by his own mother when he first started to gain an interest in her stitches and patterns. It’s familiar and nostalgic, and it chases away the creeping loneliness that he still doesn’t really think about and pushes away.

To get attached to anyone out here is probably not the smartest idea. There’s just no telling when things will go sour and people run off all the time. The kitten he’s taken in is just that, and had been feral, he knows this. Who knows how long Yuri will stay. Victor doesn’t have much to offer other than the measly meals he’s able to scrounge up or trade for, and nothing more in the form of entertainment other than showing him different stitches and sending him on errands.

But the days pass, and Yuri stays. Victor doesn’t quite get it, but he accepts it as it is. He eventually gets used to their routines, and eventually doesn’t question just how well Yuri has adapted to going from stray to domesticated.

(He never brings it up, he doesn’t think Yuri would appreciate just how far his ‘kitten’ comparisons go.)

It fine, everything is fine, until one day it isn’t.

There’s no warning. Just one day, all of a sudden, the emergency bell is going off and there are engines roaring. Victor had been in the middle of putting a new battery in his Individual when Yuri, who had been sent out to refill their water gallon, slams into the store, breathless.

“Dracs are swarming the strip,” he says, and runs over to their bedding, most likely to grab his holster. “They’re taking down everyone that isn’t running.”

Victor doesn’t like the fighting. He never did. He was never a physically confrontational person, he always preferred using scathing words that went well with his softer lifestyle. However, living out here does not permit that lifestyle.

He finishes the battery change with lighting speed and readies it up. He beats Yuri to the door and pushes him back hard, doesn’t even pay attention to his protests and slams the door handle in that one special way that always keeps it stuck, keeping him locked in for at least a good while.

The sun is beating down and its chaos outside.

The few with cars of their own are loaded up with what children that were living here and take off into the desert. Tommy’s store is being ransacked and the man is nowhere to be seen. Victor can hear Yuri pounding at the door behind him, but ignores him in favor of following the sounds of the fray happening just on the opposite side of the strip. He’s running then, gravel crunching underneath his boots, right into the path of laser beams flying through the air.

There’s bodies on the floor already – more Dracs than any of the Joy-Strip residents, but that doesn’t mean a thing. If there’s this many taken out already, and more to keep back… No, this is more than just a raid. This is something else, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if they did have back-up.

Victor swoops down and fishes an abandoned Individual from a fallen Drac and starts to fire at the white targets. He’s made his choice, and it’s too late to run on foot. Whatever happens, will happen.

“Find cover!” a tall blonde is yelling at them all. There’s red running down his face, and it matches the red of his mask hanging around his neck. “Don’t’ just stand out here, find some cover and shoot from behind!”

It’s almost ironic, for him to be giving these orders and then being hit not a moment later, right through his neck and he falls right where he stands. Victor vaguely, hears a girl scream, but he doesn’t look to see what happens next. He’s ducked down behind a wide pillar holding up an awning and only reveals himself to fire off another round at anyone who dares come close enough wearing all white.

“Canon!”

“Take the canon out! Take ‘em out!”

Victor’s eyes widen just enough out of surprise and shoots up just in time to see two Dracs on top of a patrol car, each one with the end of a mega-blaster steadied on their shoulders and aiming at the buildings behind him.

He scurries just in time, avoiding the hit and bumps into all the others that are running from the same thing. The lasers going flying all around him, it’s obvious that it was just something to lure them all out, and he narrowly avoids every one of them when running into a different building. He hits someone else that was racing for the same door, and the both struggle to get inside, but eventually do.

He doesn’t know what this was, or who lived here, but it’s empty now save for himself and this one other person, and both of them end up at the smashed window so they can keep a track of what’s been going on. Victor takes a quick look to see just what happened to the canon, and he doesn’t see them anymore, they may have been dusted already, but it’s hard to be sure. Either way, they better keep a look out.”

“We should just break the rest of this,” the other man says. “It’ll be easier to shoot that way.”

He’s not wrong, and so, they smash the rest of the glass with their elbows, careful with the shards that may hurt them, and both of them end up crouched down beneath it. It’s quiet outside, which must mean that the canon was taken out and the Dracs are coming up with a new strategy. They don’t know how long the cease fire will last, so now, they just wait. Somewhere down the line of them playing this waiting game, the other man breaks their silence.

“My name is Seung-Gil,” he says and Victor stares. “My real name that is. Just in case I die here, I’d like someone to know my name.”

That, okay, yes, he can understand that.

“My name is Victor,” he tells him in turn. “And, same, I guess. Also, if I die, there’s a kid I locked up in my shop on the other side. Could you make sure he’s okay?”

The man wrinkles his nose and he’s frowning worse now. “That’s annoying. But okay.”

“Thanks?”

He doesn’t reply after that, either because there’s nothing left to say, or because they’ve ran out of time. From their window, they can see a squad of Dracs marching down the road with blasters bigger than just an Individual and hitting every opening they see. The two men make eye contact again, and almost simultaneously, nod once at each other stand up and fire through their opening.

They’re able to knock down most of the squad, but the sound of their Indiviuals going off call the attention to them and soon they’re being aimed at and they both run from their post and through the building towards the back. Seung-Gil breaks through a back door, which turned out to be nothing more than a broken-down bathroom.

“Shit,” they both swear.

Victor look above the busted toilet where a window has been boarded up. He climbs over the porcelain, loses his footing and nearly falls over, but balances himself again to start pulling at the boards. From outside back in the main room, they can here the Dracs start to pile in, and even with Seung-Gil urging him to move faster, it doesn’t get the boards coming off any easier.

“Whatever.”

It’s all he hears before he looks behind just in time to see the other man pull out a yellow bandanna from his back pocket and tie it around the bottom of his face. His Individual is out, and before Victor can even stop him, he heads back out and he can hear the laser beams going. What happens to him after that, is hard to say, because there’s no way Victor is following after.

But there’s no time to mourn, he knows this. Once he gets the one off, the others fall away easier, and he hoists himself up and through the opening. He almost falls flat on his face, but he rights himself up, and runs. There’s nowhere to go except back out into the fire fight. He skids to a halt just a blast hits the dust in front of him, jumps off the side and whips his head around to find safety.

“In here!”

Victor turns his head in the direction of whoever is calling after them. There’s a group of kids, hanging out of a doorway on the opposite side of the street, only a few feet away from where he was before. He runs towards them, daring to look back and sees a load of dead Dracs but no signs of the man that was with him. Maybe he escaped, who knows, hopefully.

Victor runs into the building and the door is shut tight behind him. He’s breathing hard and someone is leading him over to the side to sit down.

“Where you hit?” they ask him.

“No, no I’m good.”

“Good, because we might need to keep fighting.”

That goes without saying.

Once he catches his breath, he stands back up. It does no good to not be active and alert, and he ends up stationed by the window, looking through some curtains with a few others.

“How many are there?” he wonders aloud, because he can’t see any now, but he knows they just have to be out there.

“I’m not sure. But if we can hold whoever is left for a few more minutes,” a young girl with short brown hair and violet eyes tells him, “there’s a killjoy convoy coming back this way that will stop to help us. We can take the strip back with them.”

“Do we know that for sure?” he asks her.

“Yes! My brother and his friend are with them, I was on a transmission with him before this happened and they know. They’ll be here.”

“Okay,” Victor nods. “Okay… We should pass the message along to whoever is still able to pull a trigger, we keep them at bay, but no more than that. No advances, just keep them off.”

She nods and runs off, leaving the building behind and Victor can see her ducking behind whatever she can and goes off to inform the next group. He didn’t expect her to take off like that, didn’t expect her to follow something that wasn’t even really an order but more of an observation and he wonders if he’s accidently stumbled into playing leader again.

Victor looks at the others, and they all look back at him expectantly. He sighs and runs a hand down his face. He doesn’t want this…

Well…

“Some of us should go up onto the roof tops,” he says. “Laying low and using the height to our advantage. Who’s good at sniping?”

“I got good aim,” says a girl with dark skin and doesn’t look much older than Yuri. “I never miss a target.”

“Go up then,” he tells her. “Take whoever else can help you and start clearing their front lines the best you can. When back up comes, leave the rooftops and help them out however you can, I don’t know what they got up their sleeves, but it’ll probably be better than what we got.”

She nods at him, grabs silently at a boy standing next to her and they both start up a staircase off to the side.

“As for the rest of us,” Victor says. “I’ll go out and man the surroundings, make sure that they don’t get any further down the strip. If we can keep them on one side, then we might be able to hold it down. Whoever wants to can come with me, but like I told the other two, once back-up comes, do what they say.”

He ends it there, doesn’t really count how many follow him out. It’s better that way, just in case.

(Just in case they end up falling behind him. Just in case there’s no way he can prevent that from happening. It’s always a toss up whether or not he can get himself out of a scrap, he can’t help everyone, he knows that. He knows that the best way to come out feeling less guilty is to be unaware of the casualties.)

Victor ends up ducked behind an overturned wheelbarrow spilling out a bunch of scrap metal. He fires off at any Drac that comes too close and is constantly checking his battery level. He’s still at near full, but the one he had scavenged is near depleted, so soon it won’t be of any use.

At one point, there’s a battle cry, and Victor picks his head up just in time to see a group of five come barreling out a shack with their masks on and guns blazing. He ducks his head down just in time to only hear the sound of bodies hitting the floor.

He prays furtively that Yuri stayed inside.

“Stupid,” he hears someone say. “That was stupid.”

“Where’s our back-up?”

“They’re on their way!”

“Are they?”

“No. No one’s coming.”

“Masks up, then.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Victor ends up calling out. To who, he doesn’t know, but enough have died recklessly, he wishes these kids would think. “That’s exactly what they want you to do, so don’t do anything stupid!”

It calms them, maybe. Either way, no one does anything rash like the group before. That doesn’t keep them from talking among themselves.

“Masks up, anyway. Just in case.”

Well, okay, yes, he can’t tell them anything about that.

He ends patting his own back pocket and groans.

He doesn’t have his mask on him.

Of course.

The seconds drag on for an eternity, and that’s how it goes on the battlefield. Every moment can be the last, and when the sounds of a convoy finally make themselves known, Victor doesn’t really know how much time has passed between leaving their cover behind and taking aim at anyone that can. That doesn’t stop him from breathing out a sigh of relief though, he’s just glad they came.

That relief doesn’t last long, though. While the newcomers pile out of their vans and cars in droves, brightly dressed and masks covering their faces, a young killjoy dressed in a sequined blazer climbs their way up on to the roof of a van and a megaphone in their hand.

“Evacuate!” they shout into the fray. “Evacuate! There’s no saving the strip! Crows are coming, evacuate now!”

That’s that, then. There’s no winning when the Scarecrow Unit gets involved. With more seasoned fighters running things now, he abandons his pseudo-leadership role in favor of running back to his shop. He needs to grab Yuri and run, there might not even be time to pack essentials, they need to run.

A Drac on a White knight comes barreling down the dirt road with more in tow. They have to be part of the new wave descending on them, and Victor hits each one of them dead in the center of their chests. They go flying, but the bikes keep going, crashing into an abandoned store front. They make such a racket that it calls the attention of ever Drac and on foot and all the killjoys that have joined the fight.

It’s madness, no one’s even taking cover. There are battle cries and even the Dracs are diving in with flying fists as the two forces run at each other and collide. Victor dodges everything now – laser blasts, flying kicks, homemade molotovs. If he had thought it was chaos before, that was nothing compared to this mess.

He’s almost back to his own shop, almost in the clear, when a white glove grips around his arm and he’s face-to-face with the enemy.

Victor doesn’t even give him a chance, even if he wanted to, his purple Individual is pressed right into that mask, right between the eyes, and he fires.

The body hits the floor, the noise it makes lost in the other sounds around him. It’s so loud, that it’s a near miracle that he even hears that voice he knows so well now crying out.

“Let go of me!”

Victor’s heart stops. He spins on his heel to the sight of his home broken into and Yuri being tossed over a large Drac’s shoulder, his hands bound together and feet kicking.

While the new wave of agents had begun to clash with their reinforcements, a whole platoon devoted themselves to busting into the buildings and home, looking for stragglers hiding, and Victor’s own home had been right in their line-up.

“Yuri!” he screams and is running, running without even thinking and without even watching those around him.

He still isn’t thinking, when instead of just shooting at Drac carrying Yuri away, he throws his entire body up against him, knocking him over and letting Yuri hit the ground.

Victor’s on Yuri then, dropping his weapons to untie the binds around his wrists so they can run. As soon as he gets them off though, the large Drac grabs Victor by the back of his shirt, pulls away from Yuri and tosses him like a rag doll several feet away. The breath is knocked right out of him, and he struggles to right himself up, but the Drac strides right up to him quickly and kicks him right in the gut, keeping him down and keeping him from being able to catch his breath.

It's after one hard kick to his ribs, one that makes something crack inside of him and makes him scream out in pain, that he hears scream out as well. He doesn’t know if it was actually something, but he hears his voice, and he squints through the tears in his eyes to see the young teen jump onto the Drac’s back and pull at his mask.

The Drac lets out a gruesome howl. There’s something about those masks that make it impossible to remove. No one knows exactly what they do, only that whoever puts the mask on becomes the mask, and that’s that.

With Yuri pulling at it like he’s trying to rip off the entire face, Victor tries to call out to him, tries to get him to stop before what happens next. If the Drac was able to fling Victor around like a rag doll, then it’s nothing to him, when he finally gets a hold of Yuri and wrenches him off of his back and throws him further, hard enough to slam against a wall and collapse right then and there.

“Yuri!” Victor shouts. “Yuri, get up!”

Yuri barely stirs. He tries to pull himself up, but ultimately isn’t able to stand. The Drac is stepping right up to him, pulling his Individual out and Victor scrambles. The pain in his ribs is nothing compared to the fear of what will happen if he doesn’t get to Yuri, if he’s not able to save him from the impending blast…

He’s holding his side where the pain is the worst, but through the adrenaline, he doesn’t even realize just how bad of an idea running is. Victor does though, it’s the only thing he can think of doing. He’s lost his guns, he’s too injured to fight back. He reaches Yuri’s side, and the only logical thing he can think of is to throw his own body over Yuri’s, curling up over him to shield him and give him time to run away once he takes the blast.

He steels himself for the shot.

But it never comes.

Instead there’s a battle cry, a clatter, and then the thud of a large body hitting the floor with a loud grunt, and the sound of a scuffle.

It goes on for just a beat before Victor finally looks up. He turns his head to look over his shoulder, and it’s not the Drac he sees, but a guardian angel.

It’s a killjoy, dressed in a puffy green vest and ripped up denims. There’s goggles over his eyes and his hair is a mess, but he’s standing over the Drac’s with his foot planted on his chest to keep him down. The Drac struggles to get back up, but the killjoy presses down on him harder and pulls a dark blue Individual out of his holster and aims. A second later, there smoke coming out of the three holes in the Drac's chest and the killjoy's body goes lax. Victor can’t even see his entire face, but with the dust clouds swirling around him and the sweat dripping from his brow, he’s an absolute vision.

Yuri starts to stir underneath Victor, pushing at him in all the wrong places and he ends up hissing out in pain. That gets Yuri to stop, but Victor gets up on to his knees, turns around and falls back down. The adrenaline is rushing out of him now. He’s tired.

The killjoy kicks at the Drac, confirms the kill, and then turns to the two of them. Yuri scoots closer to Victor’s side, looking at him with concern, but Victor doesn’t pay attention to him. His focus is only on the man standing in front of them.

“Are you okay?” he asks, and all Victor can do is stare.

He reaches up and pulls his goggles down, showing off the rest of his face, and it only proves that Victor is right. He’s looking up into the face of a literal angel.

“Are you okay?” he repeats.

“Yeah,” Victor breathes out. “We’re okay.”

He’s not okay. His ribs are cracked and he’s lost his weaponry. He doesn’t know if Yuri is hurt and the fight is still going on around them. For this moment, this one sliver of a second, in between all the chaos where it’s just him and his savior, it’s okay.

He’s the only one that seems to think that, though.

“Then you need to run,” the killjoy tells him, and his tone is urgent, there is no room for argument. The goggles go back on. “Both of you. Get in a wagon, they’ll take you to a drop off and help you there.”

He runs off after that, back into the fight with the other masked heroes and Yuri is grabbing his arm to lift him back up to his feet. Yuri practically has to drag him along to the vans parked off and ushering in as many as of the leftover strip residents as possible for take-off because he’s too busy trying to keep an eye on their savior.

It doesn’t matter though, because he loses sight of him and isn’t able to pick him out in between all the laser blasts going back and forth.

He gives up on it, then. He finally runs along with Yuri, holding his side the entire time, and they make it to a van that’s being overlooked by a red head wearing a yellow mask and are the last to get in before the doors close and it takes off.

For the second time in his life, Victor loses his home and everything he owns to an event beyond his control. He wonders, for just a moment, if this is how it’s always going to be now, and the pain in his ribs is nothing compared to the thought of never knowing another day of peace.

Beside him, Yuri is shaking. It’s nothing all that noticeable, but he can feel him vibrating next to him so he does what he thinks is best and puts an arm around his shoulder. Yuri fights the embrace, naturally, but only for a second before he’s slumps himself against Victor and just stays there. There’s no fight in him, not right now anyway, and no one can blame him.

The van jostles along through the desert to a safe destination, where that is, Victor doesn’t know. He doubts that there’s such a thing anymore.

Well, at least he got to see something beautiful.

(The first meeting is something that he’s always kept at the back of his mind – not something that he thinks of too much, but often enough to wonder where that killjoy is now, if he survived, if he’s still living. He would love to be able to properly meet him again.)

(Imagine his delight, when he sees him again two years later, dressed all in black but no less beautiful. He never knew he could smile so wide.)

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> couple of things: 
> 
> -this wasn't supposed to be the second chapter, the first and this one combined were supposed to be one chapter but that would've been waaaay long so i broke it up.
> 
> -i remember telling someone that romantic stuff doesn't actually happen until the madd gear concert which is actually like two chapters away, but i guess i should mention that it's only the beginning, there's no kissing or even hand holding until way way tf later my friends.
> 
> -i said slow burn. i meant it.
> 
> -also i guess even i didn't anticipate what i meant when i said novel because some of these segments are just long like... wow. w o w.
> 
> -that's all i got i guess. thank for reading, keep running, stay shiny, 'till next time xoxo


	3. See the Rust through Your Playground Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Here's one I just heard. So, two porno droids are hitchhiking outside the Acid Pools. One of them turns to the other and says, 'something smells like cherry limeade.'-"  
> "I've heard this one, it's a long one."  
> "Yeah, it is, but buckle up anyway 'cos I'mma tell it. So, she says this and the other droid looks at her and says..."
> 
>  
> 
> (CW: drugging, conversations about torture, it's hazel and cha cha and if you don't know who they are, just skip a lot of minami's back story if you're not up for it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a brief explanation and analyzation of Zone Deities
> 
> Destroya – a prophet from the Androids; allegedly Destroya is a supernatural android like deity that will free them and give them full personhood. However, android and human convergence in the Zones has given Destroya somewhat of a new identity. Androids believe Destroya will grant them freedom, Killjoys believe that any of those who fall victim to BLI though adjustments, rehabilitation, and full on brain washing will be given back their identity through Destroya’s mercy ie give them back their personhood and life.*
> 
> The Phoneix Witch – a new form of the grim reaper, said to be seen throughout the southern part of the Zones where her mailbox is located. She gathers whatever is left in the mailbox – shoes, guns, mostly masks, etc – and uses the static clinging to these items to reform a new being from the echo of the person they belonged to and grant them peace by leading them into the next life. She is not to be feared, but is to be respected, because regardless of what goes into her mailbox, the choice to take someone is hers and hers alone.
> 
> Essentially, it’s common belief that these two beings cannot exist without the other. While the Phoneix Witch simply gathers and leads the dead, Destroya brings them back so they may make the journey. It makes them a package deal, and many runners, dwellers, and joys will praise either/or interchangeably.
> 
> *this also applies to killjoys and dwellers that fall victim to a lack of faith in themselves and their community and succumb to a sense of hopelessness that not everyone can shake off when living in the desert, but that’s a separate analysis.

_crackle crackle_

_“Temperatures today are rising up to a solid 120, so keep a shade up and look out for those waveheads aiming to hit the red line to a final destination. They’ll limp anywhere and everywhere, my dust darlings, keep your motors checked._

_krsst!_

_“Now for the next tune, one of my personal favorites, and a question we all gotta ask ourselves when tryin’ to live our best lives out here with each other. To every Dweller and Joy and all in between, I ask you, ‘What Makes a Good Man?’”_

_krsst!_

_…_

_krrst!_

[‘Ain’t nothing wrong with this chemistry…’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ffoGXPn7Z4)

 

* * *

 

Mila ends up dragging Yuri with her to Ragtown.

While the Flowers do a lot for them in ways of gathering them supplies that are necessary, some things still need a one-on-one in-person trade. Fun things like music, zines, and clothes are sold in markets and the killjoy communes. Car parts, mechanical devices, and other things, all of them are things that aren’t actually life-or-death material and a dweller needs to find them on their own.

Like some rubber tubing and a fresh haircut.

“We got clippers at home though,” Yuri points out, even as he hangs his head out through the window of their truck.

“Yeah, I’m just not feeling like letting Georgi touch my hair after last time,” she says. “Or the shit trims Victor does, that poor man can’t do anything straight.”

Yuri doesn’t reply, but he does laugh because despite the pun, it is true. It’s one of the reasons why his hair has gotten as long as it has. He isn’t going to let Victor anywhere near his hair, and besides, he likes the length of it despite some setbacks.

Such as the wind whipping through it and sending it flying everywhere. His hair band had snapped a few miles back, and even though it’s kind of a pain to just let it do whatever, it’s still a lot better than having to sit up straight and swelter behind the windshield.

Mila hits his shoulder when she reaches over to pull him back in. It may be cooler to have his head hanging out like a dog, but she’s keeping the kid alive on her watch. Yuri fights her off as best as he can, but ultimately, he ends up back inside and slouching against the seat while fixing his hair.

“It’s so hot,” he whines. “Why did I have to come with you?”

“What? You wanted to be cooped up in that shack with Georgi figuring out the best way to read out his poetry while I run his errands? Or help out with Victor making lye just to get sweatier and grosser?”

Yuri doesn’t answer her, not right away. He’s untangling a patch of hair and is completely engrossed with it that he almost forgets to reply with, “No, not really.”

“Well, alright then. You’re welcome.”

“Whatever.”

Mila hits the gas and goes down the solitary road faster. She nearly hits the red line (it’s an old habit from her crash queen days) but keeps a steady hold on the truck barreling down the obstacles of the worn-out asphalt. The radio keeps cutting in an out, trying to keep in contact with the only real signal they have out here, but it’s always better to have a soundtrack going even if it’s just muffled music slightly covered with static. That way you don’t always have that sense of oppression from the silent barren landscapes outside of the communes. Sometimes it gets to a person. That is also something she learned from her crash queen days.

(She doesn’t miss those days as much as she thought she would.)

“You wanna stop off at the diner for lunch?” she asks Yuri. “We should be hitting that soon, and we can just hit Ragtown afterwards.”

“If you’re paying, sure.”

“Spoiled. You’re lucky I’m sick of vegetables and power pup.”

It’s only a few minutes down the road when she spots an all too familiar sign – a battered up old highway sign that’s been salvaged and painted over in white with red lettering that reads: ‘DEAD PEGASUS’ AND ‘EAT OR DIE’, TAKE NEXT EXIT. She barely gives Yuri any warning when she makes a sharp turn and sends him flying across the seat.

“I fucking hate when you do that!” he complains, but she only laughs.

Mila taps her fingers against the wheel to the beat of the music. All things considered though, this has always been her favorite part – the roar of the engine, the static soaked music, and the wind whipping around them. This idealistic form of freedom is what’s kept her alive and kept her going all the years before Victor and the others. She’ll always be grateful for it.

The truck keeps going down the carved-out road at the same speed up until the Dead Pegasus station comes into view and Mila finally slows down if only out of respect.

No one knows who runs the station, no one claims it. There hasn’t been a single being who has ever seen anyone go into the service booth or come out, but leave a few carbons or something valuable in the drop off connecting to the booth and the gas from the pumps flow free.

(It’s one of those Zones Urban Legends that no one can really disprove, but leave it as is out of both cautionary fear and gratitude.)

(Because if it’s one thing that’s sacred out here besides water, it’s gas.)

Next to the station is the Eat or Die Diner, appropriately named because not only is the name an actual fact, but because some of the letters that had spelled out the word ‘DINER’ above the building had been destroyed, leaving it to read as ‘DI E ’. The rest of the name is painted on to a huge piece of wood and fixed to sit above that as a fun little joke.

There’s no real parking lot, so mostly people park wherever and however. It’s a problem when it’s crowded, but luckily it doesn’t seem to all that busy today. The heat is probably keeping a lot of dwellers from straying too far from home.

She pulls up to the side of the diner that’s been modified with brightly colored planks of wood. It’s the extension of the building, a sort of housed off section for where the people who run the place can sleep and rest. Mila’s been introduced to them, but she forgets their faces sometimes. She can remember their names, but matching it up always takes her a second.

(While Yuri likes to make fun of her for being like Victor with having a shit memory, she can boast that it’s not a natural disposition. That too is also a leftover from her crash queen days, but also a long story.)

“Mickey is Sara's brother, and Emil is their weird friend,” she says to herself as she kills the engine and cranks her window up half-way. “I got this. I know who they are.”

“Are you sure?” Yuri teases cheekily and is already climbing out of the truck.

“Yes, I’m totally sure!”

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. There’s no shame in the elderly needing it.”

“Rude!”

Mila chases after him, sliding out of the car and slamming the door behind her. She catches him easily, grabbing him by the shoulders and near toppling them over. Yuri only pushes her off from him and they’re like the perfect version of the big-sister and little-brother picture.

“You’re as annoying as Georgi when he wants someone to ask him to read out his new poem,” he tells her.

“Take that back,” she gasps. “You can be annoying as Victor when deliveries are made.”

“That’s a lie. No one can be as annoying as that.”

“Truth!”

She pauses then, because they’ve reached the diner’s entrance and the sight of a familiar car has caught her eye.

“Hey,” she calls out to Yuri and smacks him arm just to make sure she really has his attention, “speaking of flowers, that’s their car, right?”

It is. It’s the same badly painted Impala they see twice a week and while Mila preens at the idea of being able to shit-talk Victor without him around for once, Yuri only rolls his eyes.

“Y’know, no one’s as annoying as Victor when delivers are made,” he says, “but no one is as annoying as you when wanna you try to stir shit up.”

“I’m not annoying,” she pouts.

“Yes, you are.”

It’s all he says and opens the door for her to go through. She does, but she does it with her pout still going strong, only letting it fall when she spots two of the three flowers who ride in that Impala crowding around Sara at the counter.

“Aw, no _Ichiyo_!” she cries out and instantly grabs their attention. “I mean, I’m glad to see you guys too, but she’s my favorite.”

 _Ukon_ sits on the counter, while _Shiragiku_ had been doing nothing more than leaning against it with Sara standing right on the other side. They seemed to have been in the middle of something serious, but with Mila interrupting them, the conversation ends and everyone greets her instead.

 _Ukon_ lights up when he spots Yuri shutting the door behind him.

“Yuri!” he calls out with a wave. “Long time, no see!’

“I literally saw you two days ago,” he deadpans. To Shiragiku, he says, “Doesn’t he have an off button?”

“Don’t think so. Believe me, I’ve looked,” is the reply, and _Ukon_ looks betrayed.

“I thought you loved me, Yuri!”

“Where the fuck would you even get that idea?” Yuri asks him and _Shiragiku_ sighs.

 _Ukon_ laughs, albeit nervously when being given a look and starts to swing his legs. “Never mind. My bad.”

“So, what’s the 411?” Mila asks Sara. “You look happy.”

“She’s abandoning her family, that’s why she’s happy.”

Sara’s twin pops his head out through the service window and is waving around a ladle. He doesn’t look at all happy with what’s been going on in his diner.

“Mickey,” Sara says, and boy does she sound as exasperated as ever, “we talked about this.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” he says just loud enough for them to hear and make Sara pull a face. He points the ladle in his hand out at Mila and Yuri and says, “Are you two gonna eat here or are you gonna loiter around like these other jerks?”

“We’re gonna eat,” Mila answers with a laugh. “What d’you got?”

Suddenly, another face pokes out from the service window, all smiles and friendliness radiating off from him in droves. One would think with the difference in their personalities, Mila would be able to remember which one is Mickey and which one is Emil, but, oh well.

“The chickens laid eggs today so we made gnocchi!” he tells them all, happy as can be. “Oh, but the flour had bugs in it, just so y’know. But Mickey picked them out. Most of them. Like 90 percent of them.”

“Thank you for telling us that,” says Mila. “We’ll do that.”

“Can I eat a chicken with mine?” asks Yuri.

“It’ll cost you 10 extra carbons,” says Mickey.

“I’ll give you 5 and a water voucher.”

“Deal.”

“What the fuck, Yuri,” says Mila.  “Buy me a chicken!”

“It’s not like he’s getting a whole chicken,” Mickey sighs, but he’s already being ignored.

Yuri’s betrayal aside (because wow, after she offered to pay for his lunch he goes off and pays for actual meat for himself only, rude…) Mila is still more interested in Sara’s news and shifts the attention back to her. Once Mickey is back in the kitchen, she asks her again what the good news is. At first, Sara shimmies in place, a coy smile worming its way onto her face and there’s mischief in her eyes.

“You’re gonna have to stop calling me Sara,” she tells Mila. “And forget about Princess Renegade, I got an upgrade. You can start calling me  _Violet_ now.”

It takes a moment, but when it clicks Mila’s eyes go big and she’s launching herself over the counter to tackle Sara into a hug. She starts screaming, Sara starts screaming, and the others are wincing with how loud they’re being.

“You’re a flower now?!” Mila is ecstatic. No, that’s not accurate enough to describe the elation that is pouring off from her and into the embrace she has yet to end. “Sara! Sara, that’s so cool!”

“I know!” Sara smiles. “I had an interview with one of the Big 3 like, only a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t even know until these two came in later on to tell me that I’ll get an answer in a week or so. Oh, you should’ve seen Mickey though, he was so mad.”

“He still is!” Mickey shouts from the back and then the sudden sound of several large pots banging together.

He’s brushed off quickly though, and the two girls are back at talking quickly back and forth. Sara even goes as far as to bring out the new Individual she’s been given in a bright purple color with gold stripes running across the barrel. It’s the epitome of shiny and Mila kind of wants one like that, her own red one has been beat to hell and back. Quite literally.

Eventually, without anyone else really noticing, _Shiragiku_ jerks his head towards the door at _Ukon_ and the other man slides off the counter.

“Well, we should get going then,” _Shiragiku_ says, grabbing their attention to say goodbye. “We look forward to working with you, Sara. I don’t know if you’ll end up joining our squad, but whichever one gets to work with you is gonna be lucky.”

“Thank you,” she smiles, and looks so happy it quite unbelievable.

“You’re leaving?” Mila nearly whines. “Why? You should stay and eat with us! Have you eaten already? Either way, you should hang out!”

“I should’ve stayed home to make lye,” Yuri sighs and is swatted by one of Mila’s hands.

“We don’t want to intrude,” _Shiragiku_ beings to say, but he gets cut off almost immediately.

“Why not?” asks _Ukon_ “We don’t have anything else to do today. We only came out here to give Sara her mask, we should at least eat something.”

“I don’t wanna be an inconvenience,” he mutters.

“Yuri, it’s a restaurant,” Emil tells him as he passes by with a tray of food ready to be served. “It’s what we do here, have a meal for once!”

Mila’s ear twitches. This is the second time someone has addressed _Shiragiku_ as _Yuri_ , she’s been watching, she’s noticed. And if she’s noticed…

Her eye slide over to Yuri, who’s own eyes are narrowed and staring a hole into _Shiragiku_ ’s profile. Yup. He’s noticed.

“Why do they keep calling you Yuri?” he asks.

He’s so calm in this moment that Mila is a little giddy over the impending storm. It’s been so long since Yuri’s had a full-on blow-out.

To his credit, _Shiragiku_ does not lose his cool at being called out. He doesn’t even respond right away, he takes his time in standing up straight and looking over at Yuri with the most impassive face. It’s a little disappointing when all he does is shrug.

“Just tell them!” _Ukon_ cries out “Just tell them, Yuri, who cares?!”

“I’m gonna care in three seconds if what I think is happening is happening,” says Yuri. He looked _Shiragiku_ right in and the eye and asks, “Is your name Yuri?”

It’s like the whole diner is at a standstill. Mila is watching, _Ukon_ is watching, and Sara too. Mickey has his head poked out from the service window again, and Emil and the four killjoys he’s been waiting on in the corner booth all have their heads swerved in their direction watching.

As for the two in the center of all this attention, Yuri is still waiting for his answer with arms crossed in front of him and his perpetual scowl dragging a corner of his lip down further and further. _Shiragiku_ levels a stare at him, his brow furrowed a little in the middle and then, finally, he looks away and sighs.

“Yeah,” he says. “My name is Yuri.”

A beat of silence passes before the implosion.

“What the fuck?!”

“Here it is!” Mila cheers.

“What the fuck?!” Yuri goes on. “What the actual fuck?! No, no, I’m the only Yuri! What the actual fuck is happening, fuck you!”

 _Shiragiku_ – or rather _Yuri_ , sighs and rubs at the back of his neck.

“This is why I didn’t want to say anything,” he says. “I knew he would react like this.”

“Fuck you!” Yuri shouts at him. “You don’t know shit about me!”

“He knows enough to know this would happen,” Mila laughs. “And be right.”

“Fuck you, too!”

“Are you gonna calm down?!” Mickey yells at him. “Cos you can either do that or get out without eating a chicken!”

“Whatever, I’m over this,” Yuri says and leaves them all to go sit in a booth on the other side of the diner. “I’m over it, shut up about it, I’m done.”

“He’s not,” Mila tells them. “He’s gonna be fuming about this for the next week. So, now that you’ve officially been the target of a Yuri-tantrum, you should come eat with us!”

Yuri, for all that he can against the force of nature that is Mila determined to get her way, does try to get them out of the invite. But with _Ukon_ insisting that they stay to socialize, and well because he’s hungry and sick of eating rice and beans. Between him and Mila, Yuri finds himself sitting in a booth across from Mila and his namesake counterpart.

“I still can’t believe any of this,” teenage Yuri pouts. There really isn’t any other way to put it, he’s pouting. “No one’s supposed to have the same name. I’m supposed to be the only Yuri out here, who the fuck do you think you are?”

“I can’t help what my parents named me,” Yuri says.

“Well, neither can I, asshole. There’s only enough room for one Yuri out here, and it shouldn’t be you.”

"If that's the problem," Mila begins to say with her sly little grin blooming on her face, and Yuri just knows she's going to be a dick," you can always go back to calling yourself Puma -"

"I shouldn't have bought you anything, I should've just let you eat as much power pup as it takes you to die and let me live in peace."

A beat passes.

“My name is Kenjiro,” says _Ukon_.

“Literally, no one cares.”

“Don’t be mean,” Mila scolds him. “I care, _Ukon_ , that’s a great name… What was it again?”

“Kenjiro,” he tells her. “But my friends called me Agent Kenny-J!”

Yuri scoffs. “Sure they do.”

“I have plenty of friends,” Kenjiro pouts and sinks into his seat. “I just gotta work a lot.”

"Yeah, okay, I believe that."

“Oh, what’s _Ichiyo_ ’s name?” Mila asks, suddenly. “That doesn’t matter now, does it? Can I know her name?”

“Um… Well, I guess it doesn’t really matter,” says Yuri. “Her name is Yuko, as for her girls, well, you already know their names.”

“No way! Their names are really Axel, Lutz, and Loop?!”

“Well, yeah. It’s kind of a long story. Well, no, not really a long story, but it is a personal story, so, yeah.”

“Oh, no, no, that’s cool, I get it.”

Their conversation gets interrupted by Sara bringing over a tray filled with their food, and just in time, Mila is feeling extra hungry.

“Okay,” she says, “eggs and lizard jerky wrap for Kenjiro, Yuri gets the power pup chili – ”

“I bought a chicken,” Yuri tells her, and Mila kicks him under the table.

“She’s talking to Yuri-1,” she tells him. “Not you.”

“Why the fuck does he get to be Yuri-1?!” he asks, outraged. “I was here first!”

“I’m pretty sure I’m older than you,” Yuri tells him.

“I don’t give a fuck. I still got to this party before you did, I’m Yuri-1.”

“You’re a child,” says Sara, and she sets the two plates of gnocchi down in front of Yuri and Mila. “I can’t believe there are people who think you could be a flower and not just a killjoy.”

“Flowers are just over glorified killjoys and everyone knows it!” he yells at her retreating back. “Who apparently, really enjoy the taste of dog food if they come out all the way to a diner to eat it.”

“Power pup may be dog food,” Yuri says to him, “but when it comes to getting something out here that isn’t just lizard jerky or probably-mutated fish, it’s a good source of protein.”

“Finally!” Mila cries. “Someone who’ll just up and say that it’s dog food! I keep fighting with Victor and Georgi about this, they insist it isn’t dog food.”

“It literally comes in a can that’s labeled ‘Power Pup’.”

“I know! But lemme tell you something about Victor–.”

“Yuri, would love to know whatever it is about Victor,” Kenjiro says through a bite of his wrap. “Share away.”

“Don’t say it like that!” Yuri cries out, blushing now. “He doesn’t mean it like that.”

“Oh?” Mila sings and leans forward, smirking. “Mean it like how? What’s the 411 on this, Yuri, you got a secret crush on Victor?”

“No!” he near shrieks. “I mean it. No, don’t be ridiculous.”

“Yeah, she’s being ridiculous,” Kenjiro says beside him, and Yuri reaches his hand over to smash his wrap into his mouth to keep him quiet.

“That’s too bad,” says Mila and jabs a fork in Yuri’s direction. “It’s always fun to see the list grow, y’know.”

Yuri gives her a suspicious glance, and for good reason. She’s egging him on for a reaction, and whether he bites is yet to be seen.

Mila usually gets her way though, someone always takes the bait.

“What list?” he asks, and she smiles.

Boys are stupid, they always bite.

“You know! The registry list kept at the library of all the “married” couples out here. It’s always good to see it grow, right? Means were surviving well enough out here.”

“M-married?!” If they thought his face was red before, they were not prepared to see the clash of gold over beet red. “No one mentioned anything about marriage here, you only mentioned a crush.”

“Ah, so that means that there is a crush, though?”

“No!”

“Again, that’s too bad. How could you leave poor Victor at the altar like that?”

“Please, stop with the wedding scenarios.”

“Yeah,” says Kenjiro. “Let’s talk about planning their first date instead.”

What happens next can only be described as a shoving competition between Yuri and Kenjiro, with one yelling at the other to shut up and the other to stop denying things and let them happen. Mila is clapping along and laughing, and the younger Yuri just wants to eat his chicken in peace.

“Shut the fuck up!” he ends up shouting and throwing a spoon at the both of them.

It ends up hitting Kenjiro dead in the center of his foreheads, bounces off, and then clatters against the floor.

“Don’t throw the spoons!” Mickey yells at them from the service window. “We made them ourselves!”

Things quiet down after that. Mila spends most of their lunch time between eating her own food, stealing pieces of Yuri’s food, being kicked by Yuri for stealing his food, and then teasing Yuri-2 into telling her some of his more personal info.

Yuri-2, Yuri notes as he stabs at his (and only his) piece of chicken on his plate, is really being tight-lipped about it all. It’s not like he cares where this guy came from or if there’s anyone else in his cliental list that he gives gifts too, but it’s always a blast to see when Mila doesn’t get the info she’s after so easily. She’s good like that, after all, people just have a habit of letting her know the things she’s trying to find out.

All of this gets annoying though, and annoying fast, even more so when the tab is paid and the four of them end up loitering in the parking lot outside of the diner, Mila still carrying on a conversation as if she was one of those church ladies from Before talking to their friends and making their grandchildren wait painfully off to the side.

They’re gonna be here for a while, she’s already telling him the story about the time Victor lost a bet to Chris and had to be the poster boy for Hyper-Thrusts for a season when they first met several years ago. Literally, he was photographed with some droids and not wearing much, he was a literal poster-boy.

“I know,” he hears Yuri-2 tell her. “I see the poster every now and again.”

“Oho! You’ve seen it more than once?”

“Well, I mean, yeah, Chris keeps it on display in his own room, and he’s a friend so we see each other sometimes, it’s hard not to notice it.”

“Is that the only thing that’s hard?”

“Mila!”

“I’m not hearing a denial, that’s the best part.”

Yuri sighs and shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s half-tempted to start shooting at some rocks with his Individual, but decides against it just in case he needs the battery later on.

Beside him, Kenjiro is listening in on the conversation, but isn’t talking much. He keeps giving Yuri’s these little side looks, looking like he would rather start a conversation with him but doesn’t make a move to do so. Yuri, on the other hand, has no inclination to do anything about that, so he’s really out of luck.

Maybe he’s finally learned to just leave Yuri alone.

“So, how long have you been living out in Zone 4?”

Maybe not.

“A while,” he answers, shortly.

“What about before that.”

“Zone 3.”

“Why’d you move to 4?”

“Just did.”

“Sounds like there’s a story there.”

“Nope.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

“Hm…”

The look he gives him is skeptical at best, but it’s not like there’s much of a story to tell. There really isn’t, but he keeps staring at him.

“There’s no story,” he snaps at him. “Dust storm came by, took out our base, so we packed up and left. We found an abandoned shelter, fixed it up, and settled down. End story.”

He hopes that his short tone would end it then and there, but like most of Yuri’s hopes, it doesn’t happen and he’s left with the unwanted outcome.

“Well, I mean, moving around is interesting enough on its own I guess,” Kenjiro says, completely ignoring the atmosphere and talking to Yuri like this conversation is wanted on both sides. “I’ve pretty much have always lived with Yuri and Yuko down in 5 since being out here. Oh, well, I guess for a while you could say we lived out in 6 cos there was this trailer we worked out of in the Grove before I became a real flower, but our official house was always near the shore.”

Yuri arches an eyebrow. For once he’s saying something that’s actually worth talking about and asks, “What kind of work?”

Kenjiro only smiles and taps his nose. “Classified.”

“Whatever,” Yuri rolls his eyes, he should have known that the conversation wouldn’t keep up for long.

Mila is doing something with Yuri-2’s hair, she keeps pushing it back and over and saying something that has him swat at her hands and shaking his head furiously. She’s laughing, though, and her having a good time doesn’t bode well to how long he’s going to have to stay standing there.

Kenjiro starts to kick at the small rocks, sending them flying further than the last in some kind of spot-on game to kill the boredom. Yuri doesn’t bother to comment on it, just watching him in silence is a little entertaining enough, and it’s better than being dragged into another moment of pointless small talk.

So, he makes do with taking in his surroundings, not like there’s much to see, but still.

There’s a car at the gas station – two girls with bright purple and blue hair dressed in fluorescent yellow are at the service window and loading it up with a couple of stuffed animals while the two boys with bright red braids are sitting on the hood and skimming through a magazine and their radio going. He can faintly hear Dr Death Defying introducing the next song and the tune that follows after. A few birds have landed on top of the sign above them and are making noises at each other. The sun is still hot, and Yuri grabs at his hair and pulls it back while now wishing he still had his hair tie.

“Want this?”

His attention is snapped back to the boy beside him. Kenjiro is holding out a worn out looking elastic headband that’s in a bright green color with little white stars painted on it.

“It technically belongs to one of the girls,” he says. “But they’ve been talking about cutting their hair shorter lately, so they probably won’t be needing it.”

“Why do you have it?” Yuri asks him, but takes it all the same.

“One of them probably left it in my pocket. I didn’t notice it until after we left home. They do that sometimes, they like to steal my vest and take turns wearing it.”

“Probably because it looks like something a kid would make,” he scoffs, and Kenjiro deflates.

“I worked really hard on this!”

Yuri pulls both a face and his hair back. He gives the vest a long look, noting that the denim is worn and bleached a lighter blue than it probably started off as. It really is held together by patches that look like they were made by the crooners down in the Grove and he has no idea how he was able to melt those bottle caps into the fabric, but Destroya save them all, he’s pretty sure those are the only things keeping it together if the lack of seams is anything to go by.

“How come there’s no flowers on it like the other two have on theirs?”

Kenjiro blinks, probably because he doesn’t believe that Yuri is actually taking an interest in keeping a conversation going, and to be honest, neither can Yuri. He’s gonna go ahead and blame the sun on this one.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “I just never got around to asking Victor, I guess. He’s always busy with other orders, and I always end up putting it off.”

Yuri feels his mouth pull down in a frown and his eyes narrow. “How come you never asked me? If you wanted to be friends so bad, you should’ve thought about doing that. Or what, you don’t think I can do a good job? I did _Ichiyo_ ’s, y’know.”

“I know! And it’s great work! I… guess I never thought about that either.”

“Well, that’s cos you got a beta-bug for a brain. Gimme your vest.”

He holds his hand out to take it, and when Kenjiro doesn’t move, he snaps his fingers and says, “Now!”

The way he snaps out just that one word has Kenjiro pulling his vest off and handing it over without another moment of hesitation. Yuri grimaces at the feel of the fabric, like it’s been pulled and stretched in every direction and worn so often that it’s practically fitted to its owner and only its owner.

He does a quick inspection, notes the places where he can place his flower and have it be noticeable. His eyes flicker back to the other boy’s cheek and takes in the yellow color painted against his tanned cheeks and commits the shape of the petals and how many there are to his memory.

“What kind of flower is that?” he finds himself asking before he can even stop himself. It’s not like it was a necessary question, he could have just remembered the pattern and replicated it without needing to know that much. Oh, well too late now. “Like, specifically, I know you call it an ‘ukon’, but I don’t know what that means.”

Kenjiro lights up, though, and if Yuri thought he had seen this kid excited before, well, he hadn’t seen anything yet.

“It’s a yellow cherry blossom!” he tells him. “I’m so happy you asked me! No one ever really asks, they just ask for a name and that’s about it.”

“So, why do you call it ‘ukon’ if it’s just a cherry blossom?”

“I guess because technically Yuko is a cherry blossom, too. We’re different variations of the same flower, and they both mean different things. I give Yuri a hard time about that, but it’s not like I don’t get it, and I _know_ his chrysanthemum is more specific, I get why he chose it.

He gives Yuri a look, one that’s he not accumstomed to seeing because it reeks of something more adult and no-nonsense and not something that belongs on his face. Not as far as Yuri is concerened.

“We might just be flowers, but there was a whole language based on them once upon a time, y’know. They all mean something, and we take it pretty seriously. No one just chooses a flower because it’s pretty.”

To tell the truth, Yuri’s never really thought about it before. Not like that anyway. There are more killjoys in the zones than there are flowers, hell, even the crash queens outnumber them, but he sees the bright colors of their petals every now and again. He’s just always left it at that though, just another person wearing a codename that they picked out as their new identity and figured there was not more to it.

“Have you thought about what kind of flower you would wanna be?” he asks Yuri.

Yuri rolls his eyes. “I don’t wanna be one. I never thought about it. It’s not gonna happen. We all don’t jump at the idea of being a part of the flower chain from the moment we start running.”

“Hm, I didn’t though. I became a flower when Yuri did,” he says. “But I guess it’s cos there wasn’t really anything else to do other than that. We ran with a trio, but just as joys, and when the positions were offered, we took them.”

He says all this so earnestly, like it’s just a matter-of-fact and when it comes down to it, it pretty much is. Things like that happen out here. Strangers become family, survival evolves into community. Community usually means work, and with work means some semblance of safety. It’s easy to see the appeal.

“How long have you been revving it up with him?” Yuri asks, only this time there’s a furrow in his brow like he can’t understand the appeal of running with a total stranger even if it’s a bit hypocritical of him to even feign as much. It’s not like he hasn’t been doing the same thing with Victor for so many years.

Kenjiro hums to himself, and he has the same kind of look in his eyes that Mila gets when she’s thinking about something that is usually only hilarious to herself.

“All my second life,” he answers eventually with a smile. “Literally, my second life. It’s kind of funny, if you ever wanna hear about it.”

Yuri gives him a long look, expressionless, and eventually turns away while shaking his head.

“I’ll pass,” he says, and Kenjiro only laughs.

“Come on, Yuri, be my friend!” he says. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I could start to actually tolerate you.”

“So mean,” Kenjiro pouts. “There’s nothing wrong with making friends, y’know. Everyone can use more of them out here.”

Yuri gags. “How the hell did a sentimental piece of work like you survive this long?”

To Yuri’s surprise, Kenjiro does not reply to him. In fact, Yuri’s never really seen him looking as pensive as he does now, not even looking at him anymore but rather turning his head up and staring out into the sky above them. It’s a little unsettling, Yuri doesn’t know where his mind has taken him, or like the idea that it might somehow be his fault that this is happening, but suddenly it’s like none of that matters. Because Kenjiro’s head snaps back, smiles at Yuri like he wasn’t just lost in thought and shrugs like nothing happened at all.

“Who knows,” he says. “Maybe I’m a miracle child…?”

Across the way, the group of killjoys get louder. The two girls are shouting at each other and one of the boys decides to come in between them to mediate. The last one makes a big show of rolling his eyes and leaning in to the car to turn the radio up louder.

 

* * *

 

_“I think what we tend to forget out here, my dust angels, is that there definitely was a Before time. Before the Zones, Before the Dracs, Before the Director and the Executive built that giant tower for BLI!”_

_hiss!_

_“But there are some of us that do remember, those of us that were old enough to live in the Before, and have memories of the Before. But with Runners and Joys getting younger and younger, it’s hard to know just which ones are living their second life, and whether or not they’re making it count.”_

_krrst!_

_“So, make it count, before the Phoenix Witch comes to collect her debt. Because when the time comes, it will come, and we would all like to have someone lookin’ for us when the dust starts to settle. Not unlike, ‘The Man Who Sold the World’.”_

_…_

_hiss!_

_…_

_‘[We passed upon the stair, we spoke of was and when…’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMl7jnWY4es)_

 

* * *

 

Sometimes in life, detours need to be taken. It’s all very frustrating, because nobody like to be taken off the direct path, but sometimes it’s needed. Hindsight is 20/20, and sometimes that detour puts a lot more into perspective after the fact and is all that more appreciated.

More annoying than detours though, is the sense that sometimes the story doesn’t begin with birth - unless the birth involves being the main character in someone else’s story, but never the one being born. No, that’s too easy, too blasé, too boring. Because what could possibly be interesting about someone who has only been alive for ten minutes at a time?

Nothing.

That’s what.

So, no, the story rarely starts at birth, but the story doesn’t necessarily start the same for everyone. For one, it begins maybe in the middle of their adolescence, for another in their 30’s, hell, maybe for someone it’s even at the end when their youth is spent and they’re already one foot in the grave.

For Kenjiro, it begins when he’s fifteen and has a bounty on his head.

‘ _Although I wasn’t there, he said I was his friend_ ,’ the radio croons as Kenjiro stuffs what he can into a canvas bag. ‘ _Which came as a surprise, I spoke into his eyes, I thought you died alone a long long time ago_.’

War is not kind, that should always be obvious. War took his home, his family, his friends, and all promise of a normal life. He’s fifteen, and caught up in the belly of The Lobby, just trying to survive to the next day.

And there might not be a next day unless he gets out of here. Fast.

There’s no other way to say it: he fucked up. He fucked up big time, and even he can’t play it off.

He has too soft a heart for this life, and it’s not like he’s naïve enough to not know that much. It’s also something that he’s constantly reminded. Erika for one, never lets him forget it.

 _You’re too forgiving, Ken_ , she says when it comes to cooking and cutting for the customers looking for a wave fix.

_You never cut enough, Ken. You never price it high enough, Ken._

_They’re not real people, Ken_ , she says when it comes to the girls the find themselves surrounded by. _Porno-droids are built for one thing, it’s not a big deal._

They may not be real, breathing, human beings, but they’re meant to look like human beings, act like human beings, and used for sex as if they were human beings. That makes them real enough for him.

Cinnamon Margaret is a low-ranking porno-droid that was taken straight from her manufactures and used to call in the passerby addicts and perverts by using her assets and hooking them on their opiates. She is also the one person (questionable human sentience aside) that he could call a friend.

And now, she’s gone.

If it’s one thing that a taken porno-droid is afraid of, it’s being discarded. There’s no record of her in the BLI mainframe, she can’t take shelter in a legal facility, she can’t house herself without her own personal freedom benefited to her after working in the system and gaining a steady faction of clients. She’s at the mercy of the Lobby, and with no protection from anyone, is at the mercy of those that are always more than willing to take advantage of her.

She laid out these fears to Kenjiro in the late hours after working a shift. Her time was almost up, she was created for short profit, and she knew that. Her circuits are starting to fry out, her joints are growing stiff. She needs to start getting regularly tuned up, but there’s no way that would ever happen. She’s more likely to be thrown out and replaced than maintained. It’s easier that way.

“Stupid,” he tells himself and shuts the radio off. “Stupid, stupid, so stupid.”

He shouldn’t have given her that brick. He shouldn’t have tried to hide it by cutting another with a cocktail to keep the number even. He shouldn’t have asked Erika about it. He shouldn’t have used their lab. He shouldn’t have, he shouldn’t have, he shouldn’t have he shouldn’t have he shouldn’t have he shouldn’thaveheshouldn’thave–

He shouldn’t have done any of it.

But he did.

And now people are dead.

A porno-droid has gone rogue.

And people are going to find out it was because of him.

That is... if they haven't already.

He shuts the lights out of his private hideaway for the last time and doesn’t bother to lock the door behind him.

The Lobby is technically a part of Battery, but barely. Every now and again, the benevolent overlords of Battery will grace them with their presence and raid some labs and brothels and crack down on them with more routine patrols by low-level Agents that barely care about their positions.

The air is always smoky, like a drug-induced fog is just a part of the scene at all hours of the time, coming in from dens, labs, and the exhausts of the city reigning above them. He wraps an old, white bandana across his face, covering his nose and mouth and heads out. He tries to do some quick thinking; he knows he needs to get out of the Lobby, but it’s not like he can just walk right into the city and try to start over there. He doesn’t have any immigration papers, and he still remembers the stories about the refugees that seek shelter there.

Just thinking about them makes him shudder.

Nope. Battery is out of the question.

The only other place is the desert… It’s his only hope of staying alive, but at what cost? He doesn’t know where to go. He knows that there are people there, but he doesn’t know how to find any of them…

Or what they’re like.

They’re technically outlaws, some say worse than those that find themselves making it by in the Lobby. Killjoys, runners, and dwellers, it's better to keep away from all of them. They live out there for a reason, after all…

He doesn’t get much further in his musings, and all thoughts of formulating a plan are cut to a halt, because it’s at this very moment that two men in suits step right up to him.

Kenjiro ends up stumbling backwards, he’d been keeping his head down the entire time to keep himself small and inconspicuous enough, and is caught entirely off guard by the sudden intrusion. One of the men catches him by the front of his jacket, keeps him in place, but his grip is strong and unyielding. Even if he had the mind too, there’s no way for him to make an escape and the thought makes him stomach drop.

This is it.

He knows both men, and knows them well. He doesn’t work for them, not necessarily. They’re hired guns, the ones who keep the riff raff in line through tangible fear and irredeemable violence. And that much is only fitting, seeing as their only interests are licorice whips and instant Armageddon. It’s a little frightening, to say the least.

“Lookit what I caught here, Hazel,” says the one holding him. “I believe it’s our dear friend, Li'l Ken, making a fast move on outta here.”

“Ooh, boy!” Hazel croons, excitedly. “It sure does look it, doesn’t it, Cha Cha? I bet the boss ain’t gonna like that.”

“No, indeed, I bet on every last pixie stick I took for granted, he ain’t gonna like this one bit.”

“I’m not running anywhere,” Kenjiro tells them. “I- There’s no reason for me to? I mean, ha ha, why would I be running?”

Neither one answers. They both tilt their heads in the same direction, at the same angle, the eyes of their full head masks boring right through his skull like they’re able to read every one of his thoughts and it makes his heart race.

“What’s with the bulging sack there?” Hazel is the first to ask, and he leans in just a step closer to inspect the canvas bag he let fall to his side. “Gotta awful lot stashed away in there, hmm.”

Hazel’s voice has always been off putting. He’s taller than Kenjiro could ever imagine being himself, and broad-shouldered; but his entire face is hidden away by the pink dog-themed helmet he keeps on at all times, and Kenjiro is sure that there’s something in there that keeps him talking the way he does. It’s too high-pitched for an adult, and all the same too soft and drawls out like an eight-year-old coming down from their first sugar high. Something that was meant to be endearing, but is only unsettling.

“Just lookin’ to trade some things,” Kenjiro tells him. “I gotta- that is, um, I ran out of food and I don’t have any carbons left so, I’m just getting rid of some thing I don’t need.”

“Is that right…” Hazel tilts his head up to his associate, cocks it to the side and then says, “Cha Cha?”

Cha Cha. If Hazel’s voice is off putting, then Cha Cha’s is terrifying. He’s taller, broader, and his voice is deeper. It’s no baritone, but it’s gruff, and it’s raspy, and it echoes. It shakes a person down to the very core, and it’s only the design of his own bright blue helmet being so ridiculous looking that keeps a person from thinking that it could possibly belong to an old forgotten God himself.

(But then again, maybe that wouldn’t even stop them….)

Kenjiro takes his eyes away from Hazel’s helmet and makes the mistake of looking at Cha Cha. The giant plastic grin and perfect round eyes bulging out right in front of him makes his stomach drop and his hair stand on end. He keeps perfectly still, like a man injured in front of a starving tiger and who’s only hope dangles on a prayer.

“Times is tough,” is all Cha Cha says, in the end. He lets go of the grip on Kenjiro’s shit, but doesn’t move to give him any more space. “After all.”

Hazel hums, rights himself again and they both share a look that means nothing to anyone other than themselves seeing as how ever bit of their faces are hidden away.

“I-I should get going,” Kenjiro tells them. “I don’t wanna hold you both up. I’m sure you’re busy?”

He tries for friendly, he always does. He should’ve learned to stop a long time ago.

“What’s the rush?’ Hazel asks. “Are we in a rush, Cha Cha?”

“I don’t think so, Hazel. Nah, we got plenty to kill.”

“Time, y’mean?”

“Ha, yeah. That too.”

He doesn’t mean for it to be so audible, but even if Kenjiro hadn’t been able to hear his own gulp, there’s no denying the fear that must be plastered on his face what with the way they both begin to laugh.

“Don’t so be afraid, Kenny-J!” says Cha Cha, as he brings an arm down behind Kenjiro’s shoulders, plastering him to his side and keeping him nearby. “It’s not like we’re gonna hurt ya.”

“Yeah,” Hazel agrees. “Here. Have a lollipop. Y’lookin’ a little stressed there. It’ll make ya feel better.”

He reaches into the depth of his suit jacket and pulls out a crudely wrapped lollipop. It’s definitely been tampered with, but to what extent, who can say?

“Ah, no, I couldn’t. Thank you though,” Kenjiro says.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t be like that,” Hazel whines and waves the candy in front of his face. “We’re only trying to help ya out here. Y’said ya was hungry, right?”

“I mean, not really. I just needed to get some food to last for a while, y’know? Not, not like I- I’m not like, starvin’ or anything, y’know?”

The grip on his shoulder grows tight. It makes him flinch, makes him cry out. Makes him look up back into Cha Cha’s hideous face and shudder when he speaks.

“Take the lollipop, Kenjiro,” he says. And there’s no humor there.

Well… That’s that…

He doesn’t have an option now, but was there ever really one before? No, there really wasn’t. It was always going to come to this.

Kenjiro reaches out and Hazel shoves the lollipop into his hand. They both watch so intently as he unwraps the candy and gives the sticky green piece of hard sugar a look over, as if that much is going to tell him just how painful this is going to be, and shoves it right into his mouth hoping that whatever it is, it’s quick.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t the explosion of artificial color and mass amount of sugar covering his taste buds. It’s so sweet, he had forgotten what sweets tasted like. Other than that shock though, nothing happens. It takes him back a little, back to the Before, when he would buy whatever candy he could at the corner store with the change he found on the sidewalks.

It makes him cry a little.

He barely notices both Hazel and Cha Cha cheering him on.

“Tastes so good y’can’t help but cry, huh?” Hazel is nudging him and laughing at his expense.

“Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Cha Cha is asking him. “And it tastes great, huh?”

“Of course, it does, it’s from my own stash of course. Lookit, he likes it!”

“He sure does.” Cha Cha squeezes his shoulder again, but it’s less hostile. “Walk with us, Li’l Ken. We got business to talk.”

It’s not an invitation. He has no choice but to move along as Cha Cha leads him away, still gripping on to his shoulder. Hazel falls into step right beside them, trapping him in between the two of them and he doesn't think there's any way to escape, not without being taken down right here and now, but when he really thinks about it... It doesn't look like tonight could end any other way...

His heart is racing - he keeps himself cool and collected on the outside, but on the inside, he's a wreck. He doesn't want to die here. He doesn't want to die because of this...

They continue on down the street he had been walking, passing by the boarded-up shacks and slants ran by the slumlords and housing the riffraff living in the underbelly of Battery City. There's no real path they seem to be taking - not any that Kenjiro can make out - if anything, they seem to be walking aimlessly. He doesn't know if that makes him feel better or worse. With the way people seem to scurry out of their way when catch sight of the three of them walking, slamming into opened doors and shutting the window, it may just be worse.

"I'm sure you've heard all about good ol' Sugar Lips and the brick she made off with," says Cha Cha.

He says it as carelessly as if he was commenting on the weather, or on what he's had for dinner, not at all as if he's bringing up the disappearance of a once well-thought of friend. Kenjiro bites down on the lollipop on his mouth. It doesn't matter what was done to him, she was still someone.

"She liked Cinnamon Margaret," he says.

"Wazzat?"

"Her name," he clarifies. "She wanted to be called Cinna-"

"I'm sure she did," Cha Cha waves his hand and his argument along with it. "Well, anyway, she's been found and done away with now. Sorry to say, but the good news is there'll be a new Sugar Lips to play around with soon enough."

Hazel laughs. "Out with the old, in with the new. A whole new bag of sugar, but the brand is worn out and used. Now one wants to buy from a seller that hand-delivers ya to the Phoenix Witch, y'know."

"That's right," Cha Cha agrees. "Someone's gotta be made an example of."

They stop walking. They're still in the middle of a public space, technically. The street light are shining above them, there's noise from the people living in whatever dilapidated building they find themselves in front of, and there's a patrol siren out in the distance that doesn't sound too far away. Regardless, it's not hard to find an actual lack of people around to be anything but a bad sign.

"And that's why - I mean," Kenjiro stutters out. "That's why she's gone, right? Cinn-"

"Forget the droid," Cha Cha cuts him off, sharp. "She was the end, but not the means. It ain't hard to fugre someone helped her out. Droids don't have access to a kitchen, the big boss makes sure of that. But all that gotta mean is that someone else had to be involved."

"And we're right on his tail," Hazel says. "So to speak."

Kenjiro's breathing comes in sharp, little inhales. His palms are sweaty, there's even sweat beading along his hairline. He hears his own hear beat pounding away in his ears, dull but quick. The bottom of his stomach drops and the blood rushing through him is hot and alive. His body knows fear, it knows danger by now, and while this is the strongest reaction he's ever had to it,

"Who-?" He tries to ask, but his words come out like cotton. Even though he's been sucking on the lollipop, his mouth is drier than the wastelands surrounding them. He swallows, tries again, asking, "Who did it?"

They don't answer him. They laugh.

"Who did it, Hazel?" Cha Cha mocks.

"Who did it, Cha Cha?" Hazel mocks right back.

"Who did it?"

"Who did it?"

"Who did it?"

"Who did it?"

Their chanting makes him dizzy. His anxiety is spiking high, and his breathing is coming in more shallow by the second. It’s getting so much harder to breathe, it’s like sucking through a straw and not being to exhale at all. His vision starts to dance and he does what he should’ve done to begin with – he spits the lollipop out and the whole thing just makes his body shudder violently right into a coughing fit.

He’s left to fall then, hits the floor on his hands and knees and hacks up phlegm and who know what else until his throat is raw and in pain. Hazel puts his foot out, careful and concise, and pushes Kenjiro right over. He flops onto his side without resistance and his breathing heaves out of him in shaky gasps and his vision dims out.

“Shoulda thought about doin’ that a lot earlier,” he tells him. “Shoulda thought twice about don’ a lotta things, really.”

"We've already been known, Li'l Ken," says Cha Cha. "We've been watchin' and waitin'. Sniffin' you out like a vampire bat looking for a hose with a nick on its ear to suck on. They do that."

Kenjiro flaps his mouth open and closed but no sounds come out. He doesn’t know what he would say to defend himself but in the end, it doesn’t matter. His vision goes out and he steadily loses consciousness with only Hazel and Cha Cha’s voices surrounding him.

"Some people just wanna help others so bad."

"Breaks ya heart, don't it?"

"Nah. They should know better to live down here, then."

There’s nothing after that.

But it’s not the end.

Hazel and Cha Cha are the type that like to play with their food, everyone knows as much. For Kenjiro to have died then and there would have been a surprise for the ages, and a great mercy to him. It doesn’t exactly surprise him to wake up bound and locked away in a dark room, but it does make him wish that he hadn’t woken up at all.

He’s groggy as hell, whatever it was they slipped him is still working its way through his body and making him think sluggishly. He’s still on his side and there’s a pain throbbing at the side of his head, and when he tries to move his limbs there is obvious resistance. He’s been tied up, but not gagged. They’ve either brought him to a place where no one could hear him, or where no one would care when they do.

"Kids these days don't know about the old ways."

The voice he hears belongs to Cha Cha and it’s like he’s been doused in cold water. It makes him shoot up, something not exactly easy with the way his legs are kept together with inflexible rope. Although, it’s then that he notices the door right in front of him. There's a soft glow of light coming in through the bottom of the door. Every now and again, Kenjiro can see shadows move pass and the sounds of their footsteps pacing along with clinking metal and something being sharpened. 

"They just don't know what a real torture's like anymore," he hears him continue on. "No one got the gumption here to take a bullet to a kneecap."

"They're all hyped up on waves and laser beams now," comes Hazel's sad agreement.

"Gimme a good ol' fashion line up any day. Nothin' beats feelin' solid metal flying from one pull of a trigger."

"When having back up ammo meant shells strapped across the chest instead of batteries in ya pocket."

"Those were the days," Cha Cha sings.

Kenjiro decides it's now or never. While the two reminisce, and prepare for whatever it is they plan to do to him, needs to make his escape. He stretches out his hands, just to test the flexibility of the tie around his wrists, and it's no good. The tie around him is too secured to just wriggle out from, but he should have expected that much. It's not like their just any kind of two-bit thugs roaming around the Lobby.

Anxiety claws away at him; it makes his mouth salivate and his eyes sting, but he forces it all back down. He cannot lose his cool. Not now. He needs to focus.

Right now, though, he can't think of a damn thing. There isn't much around him, and he doesn't want to let them know he's awake. There's no sense in calling attention to him sooner than they plan. The rope around his legs is not nearly as secured, He could probably shuffle his legs and loosen it up, but there can't be enough time for anything like that. If he could get his hands in front of him, he can get his legs free and even do something about the hard plastic around his wrists.

Kenjiro shuffles a bit to sit up-right. He had seen Erika do this once, when she was demonstrating to some of the droids how to right their arms in front of them if they were to ever find themselves in a kidnapped position. They're all made double-jointed, just as she is naturally, and it was easy for her to show them how to bring their arms around their heads and to their front.

He tries it then, does best to remember the way she leaned and brought her arm up over her head, but he can't reach that far. There's a sharp pain in the joint of his left arm from where it's constantly popping out from its socket and it limits his movement. No, he won't be able to do it unless -

He gulps. His arm. He doesn't particularly like the thought racing through his mind right now, it makes him a little nauseous to even think about it, but at this point…

(The death tech warns him, all the damn time, if it keeps happening, there's no telling what it'll be like when he's older.)

(If he gets older.)

(This might be his only chance to even grant himself the opportunity to get older.)

No, if he wants to do this, if he wants to get out of this, he has to take this chance.

He steels himself, clenches his jaw, and leans over to his left side. He lets it fall, lets it rest for just the second, and begins to rotate his arm.

Inhale.

Exhale.

He rotates his arm. He finds the joint. He feels the pops.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Find the point. Rotate again.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Now.

**Pull.**

The initial pop is loud in his ears, and it's through sheer survival instinct that he keeps his jaw clenched tight - teeth grinding together and making no noise whatsoever. His shoulder throbs and tears start to well up in his eyes, but he doesn't waste any time.

Kenjiro leans over to his right, does the best to move his left arm with it and twists his wrists. The second time is much easier. He's able to lift his arms above and over his head, forces them in front of him and bites down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. It's all he can do to stay quiet and turn his focus on untying the rope around his legs. He pulls, and wiggles and it falls away. Once those are off, he messes with his shoes, undoes the laces and reties them through the zip tie around his wrists.

Hazel and Cha Cha laugh, loud, and there's this sense of dread that racks through him. It's as if he can feel their anticipation for what they have planned for him. He's heard horror stories, but has never seen anything for himself, and he's going to keep it that way.

He pedals his feet - back and forth, back and forth, faster and faster until the friction of his laces snaps the plastic right through. Relief washes though him now that he's finally free, but there's no time to bask in it.

There's not even any real time to tie his shoes back. There are shadows underneath the door and their voices are louder than ever. He kicks them off and scurries for the closest thing to use as a weapon. It ends up being nothing more than an old wooden bat, but all he needs is a little something giving him an advantage to escape.

(There's no way he can actually take them down. He's not gonna kid himself.)

Kenjiro, armed and revving himself up for the battle of his life, waits for his moment to strike and holds his breath when the door finally opens.

"Y'know what we should bring back?" says Hazel. "Chainsaws. We need _real_ diesel action again.”

"I miss a good Molotov," says Cha Cha. "Flash bombs are convenient but literal burning flames of gas was a sight to see."

"I actually like flash bombs better. They're a good bang for their buck."

Cha Cha sighs. "It's like I don't even know ya."

Hazel waves him off and the conversation ends. They both look to where Kenjiro should have been tied up, and then again at each other.

"Where the hell-?" Hazel starts to say, and gets cut off with a sickening crack.

Kenjiro hits him with enough force to split the bat in two, sends him flaying and his mask rolling. He doesn't hesitate to take the remains against Cha Cha's kneecaps. He only gets the one good shot that gets him down to his knees and shoots out the door.

He's not quick enough, though. Cha Cha grabs him by the ankle and sends him sprawling. Adrenaline overpowers his fear, he's fighting for his life and Kenjiro kicks wildly. He gets a lucky shot when he knocks his mask off center, scrambles back up, and runs.

Their hide out isn't large. It's an oversized shed and he's slamming open the front door quicker than ever. The night air hits him with a force to be reckon with, and his breath catches.  His eyes dart in every direction, taking in his surroundings, and when seeing the bright pools surrounding him, his heart skips a beat.

He's still caught.

Their hide out is not in the Lobby. Instead of finding a hideaway with the other criminals, they've struck out further. They staked their claim out in some place arguably worse than the Zones - the Acid Pools.

Much like the Lobby, the Acid pools are still technically a part of Battery. And for technically being a part of Battery, the Acid Pools, just like the Lobby, are by no means a pleasant place.

It’s nothing more than a chemical wasteland bordering between the city outskirts and Zone 1, it’s only useful purpose serves for being a segregated area where BLI can safely dispose of anything incriminating without any civilians being the wiser. After all, who in their right mind would readily venture into a toxic area filled with bubbling puddles of acidic green and yellow waters with only a spare bit of unstable bridges made of dirt to navigate around them?

Apparently, Hazel and Cha Cha, and now Kenjiro too.

He takes off into them, being as careful as possible as to not slip on a too wet patch of mud and go tumbling into neon water. His shoulder is throbbing, all sense of adrenaline starting to leave from him and the sting of pain hits him hard. He needs to find a place to pop it back in himself. He doubts he'll be able to find anyone out there to help him do it.

Kenjiro clutches on to his shoulder, keeps in place to not jostle it, and scurries. They're going to chase after him eventually, and he needs all the time he can take to put as much distance in between him and those two as possible.

He goes on for what feels like ages. He's never been in the Acid Pools before, because like all sensible beings with a will to live, he's never dared to approach them, so he doesn't know where the pathways lead - if they lead anywhere. He knows Route Guano cuts by, maybe a mile or two off from them, but he doesn't know which direction that's in. The best he can do is navigate as safely as possible, reach the end of them, and hope he doesn't smell any of that tell-all cherry-limeade.

(He's seen what comes after that scent. He's seen what it did to his family. He doesn't need to relive it.)

Eventually, he finds a pile of tossed waste buckets, all painted white with that stupid black smiley face staring out at him condescendingly and ducks behind them to hide out for a bit. He makes his way around and stumbles backwards, hand slapped over his mouth to keep from crying out and squeezes his eyes shut.

Apparently, it's not just waste buckets. Apparently, this is some kind of space reserved for body disposal if the mass amount of half-melted limbs shoved in opened barrels are anything to go by. Kenjiro opens his eyes up, slowly, carefully, because he thought...

He thought right. Right on top of the pile of fresh bodies is Erika's own limp corpse, the top half of it anyway – eyes vacant and stained. She's wearing remnants of her lab coat over her regular shirt. She must have been cooking something up for the boss when they took her.

"Oh, Erika..." he sighs and decides that maybe this is not the place he wants to hide out.

(It's not that he's indifferent to her dying, it's just that there's no time to mourn at the moment. Time itself is of the essence, after all.)

Kenjiro scuttles off to another location, nearly tripping over into a pool of acid in his haste to get away from his former accomplice. Eventually, he finds a a ditch to hide out in and goes through the painful process of popping his shoulder back into place. It swells up around the joint, naturally, and he ends up falling backwards into the dirt wall and closes his eyes.

His breathing is deep, he focuses on that to keep from thinking of the pain in his shoulder, and nearly falls asleep from the combination of the two.

Almost, he doesn't get the chance because he hears them.

"Maybe he fell into a pool."

"Unlucky."

"For us, yeah."

Kenjiro bites down on his lip to keep from making a sound and covers his mouth to keep from breathing too loud. Their steps are slow and easy, like chasing after him is no hurried task. Like they're going to find him eventually, so there's no reason to rush it.

"Hmm... We shoulda chained him to the wall," says Hazel. "Like we did to the droid."

"Or the girl."

"Or the girl, yeah."

"Didn't think this kid would be a fighter. He's a bunny compared to the other two."

"A surprise fireball."

"Yeah, and a pain in my ass. Let's just get 'im and kill 'im before the boss man blows up again."

"Red and grey, green and black, all sorts of color runnin' together last time."

The crunch of their footsteps grows closer and closer. Kenjiro ends up pressing himself flat against the dirt wall of the ditch and prays. He prays to the Phoenix Witch, to Destroya, to even the gods of Before, anyone that could be listening in on him. Just a little sliver of hope, it's all he needs.

The footsteps stop, and so does his breathing.

It’s the quiet before the storm. He does not make a noise. There’s bubbling and gasses steaming out into the open air somewhere in the distance, but he can’t hear any of it right now. His ears are trained to listen out for the two predators above him and nothing else.

“I don’t see him,” says Cha Cha, and the crunching footsteps start up again.

“Maybe he took off towards the east end,” says Hazel.

“That’d be dumb, Guano is on this side.”

Hope.

He’s going in the direction of Route Guano. He just needs to get out of here without either one of them seeing him. He thinks up a quick prayer to the Phoenix Witch to guide him out of danger safely, and crawls out on his belly.

Kenjiro keeps low and slowly brings himself up to his full height before breaking out into sprint. He just needs to make it to the other side, he knows it, he can feel it, his freedom is right there. He just needs to be fast and not make a sound –

His foot gets caught in a small crater, catches him off guard and sends him knocking into a pyramid of waste that crashes down into a crescendo of imminent doom. He eyes squeeze shut. Why does this always happen?

"Cha Cha! There he is!"

There’s no time, he’s up again and ignoring the pain in his ankle. He runs through it all. He doesn't look back. He can't risk it, not when he can hear laser beams hitting the dirt behind him. They're not aiming to kill him, they're aiming to take out his legs, to keep him from running to drag him back.

His pace is frantic, more than once does he almost topple into a pool of acid. He flies forward, arms flailing, and legs moving fast. They’re both running after him, knocking over barrels of who knows what to catch up with him and it gives him an idea.

Anything that he comes across he flings behind him - scraps of sheet metal, barrel drums of waste, bags of garbage, it all goes flying. If it doesn’t slow them down, it at least keeps them from finding a target on his back, and the closest either one of them gets to hitting him is when a laser beam grazes the side of his head the heat radiating from the light burning his cheek where it passes him and makes him run all that much more.

He eventually comes across the largest pool, he’s ever seen. It’s a bright neon orange with steam rising from its surface, and for some unfathomable reason, there’s an unstable bridge made out of nothing, but floating canisters and a rope strung through them all and tethered with a pike on each end.

Kenjiro jumps on the first one, and it instantly bounces. His arms are flung out, the adrenaline is rushing, and he hops for the next one. He bobs, all the way across with toxic sludge spitting too close to his bare feed and making him dance away from where it hits. When he finally has his feet on solid ground again he, kicks at the pike keeping them all in place. It takes three good kicks before it finally comes out flying with a chunk of dirt attached and is thrown into the pool.

It starts disintegrating immediately, and the bridge comes apart completely without that tether. There’s some shouting on the other side, and Kenjiro’s eyes dart up just in time to see Cha Cha pull Hazel back onto the shore. The both of them straighten themselves up, giant heads tilted towards one another and they stare.

This is the crossroads, now. Kenjiro stands on one side of the giant lake now, breathing heavily, and keeping eyes on both Hazel and Cha Cha. It’s hard to tell which one raises their Individual first, but it doesn’t really matter. Without any warning, a giant bubbles forms on the neon orange surface before them and bursts into a huge cloud of gas. Cherry limeade fills the air and Kenjiro yells out and staggers backwards. His hands fly to his neck, pulls up the bandana tied there and covers his nose and sprints away.

"You better keep running, li'l Ken!" he hears Cha Cha yell after him, but he refuses to look back.

"Keep running!" yells Hazel. "Or the big bad wolves will catch up to ya!"

"Run, run, bunny, run!"

And he doesn't stop running, not even long after he's away from the Acid Pools and has finally hit asphalt. He doesn't know the road he's on, he doesn't know where it's going, but out here in the wilderness of the Zones, alone and afraid, it's the best option he's got. He doesn't stop moving until his legs literally give up on him and he falls off to the side of the road.

It's not the smartest thing to be out in the open and exposed. There's the threat of bandits and thieves, the mystery of killjoys and dwellers, the fear of Hazel and Cha Cha coming after him, but the exhaustion wins out, and he falls unconscious.

By the time he startles back awake, it's early morning.

The desert is softer in the hour after day break. The hazy blends of pinks and oranges paint the sky and makes the landscape glow. It’s beautiful, and it almost makes a person think that living out here wouldn’t be so bad. However, it’s also the coldest time of the day, and he’s shivering something fierce.

Kenjiro sits up, his teeth chattering and wraps his arms around his body. His stomach growls, and his legs are exhausted. There’s not much to do about that though, even if he’s feeling sore, wobbly, and tired, he can’t just stop. So, he stands – it’s slow going, but he eventually gets back on his feet and moves, one step at a time.

Again, he has no idea where he’s going. He has no idea what the outlaws living out here are like, but after last night, he has to try something.

It’s uncertain how much longer he keeps walking, but he keeps to side of the road and at first, he thinks it’s a mirage, but out in the distance it looks like there’s a motel standing out in the middle of the desert.

A smile breaks out on his face for what feels like the first time in a century, and he hurries towards it. If there’s people there, he can find some information – where to go, who to talk to, where to find work, how to start a new life out here. If it’s abandoned, well then, that works too. He can camp out and rest, he can desperately need some.

There doesn’t seem to be any one nearby. There’s no cars parked around the motel, and there aren’t any signs of life as far as he can tell. Still, he walks into the main lobby, just to make sure, and when he sees that it’s empty, goes to try the rooms. They all have doors on the outside of the building, and it’s a small little place, only five room or so. The first door knob he tries won’t budge, so he goes on to the next. The same thing and decides that third time’s the charm, his luck is going to change now.

He rattles the knob and it gives. He steps in. Inside are five Batter City Agents, caught off guard and armed with Individuals and Laser Rifles. They all snap their attention to him, and the bottom of Kenjiro’s gut falls.

First the set-up, then Hazel and Cha Cha, now this.

"That's not fair," he complains, sounding weak and it's all he's able to get out before the butt of one of those rifles hits the back of his head and knocks him out.

The next time he comes to, he's bound and gagged and propped up on the hood of a patrol car with the Agents surrounding him. There's a bunch of shouting going on and it all muddles together and sounds like garbage in his head. It takes him several seconds to realize that the Agents are yelling across a make-shift no man's land towards a beat-up car and the two heads craned over the roof

"We already told ya!" one of them, wearing a yellow mask across their eyes, yells, "We don't know who that is!"

There’s a low-pitch ringing in the back of his head that distracts him from whatever it is being said by the Agent in front of him. His vision is a bit blurry and there’s something wet running down from his forehead. He blinks a bit, just in time to see a mass shape of white stride right over to him and clear up into the fuzzy outline of an Agent and pull him off from the hood of the car. Anyone who had been propping him up, have let him go, have let him falls, and Kenjiro hits the floor on his knees hard. He cries out and is backhanded for it and held up by his hair.

There’s the press of an Individual against his skull, and he’s half-wishes that he had just let Hazel and Cha Cha off him then and there.

Would’ve made the whole dying thing quicker.

“Turn over the information,” says the Agent. “Or the zone-rat gets it!”

“And we keep tellin’ ya!” the other killjoy – one with a simple black mask with pink sequins over his eyes, shouts out, “we don’t know who that is! He could be one of you guys for all we know!”

“Well, he ain’t! He came stumblin’ into our trap, he’s one of you!”

“Well, what’s his name?”

“What?!”

“What’s his name,” yellow-mask asks. “If he’s one of us, we’d know his name, right?”

The Agent growls low in his throat and tightens his hold in Kenjiro’s hair, but between that and the hell that the rest of his body has been though, he barely recognizes it.

“What’s yer name, kid?” he asks, and he pulls hard enough to lift him from the ground when Kenjiro doesn’t answer him right away.

“It’s Ken!” he cries out. “My name is Ken. Ken Minami.”

The grip is loosened, and he falls back down on his knees.

“Did you hear that?!” the Agent calls out to them. “Did you hear his name?”

“Sort of?” yellow-mask shrugs. “Didn’t sound like a runner name.”

“Yeah, it really wasn’t,” says black-mask. “If that’s his real name, we’re not gonna know it out here, what’s his name?”

“Nah, I don’t think he’s one of us,” the other says. “They’re pullin’ a fast one on us, we should just get out of here.”

“The hell you are!” an Agent from somewhere shouts at them and suddenly everyone has an Individual or Rifle up and ready to fire.

“What’s yer name, kid?” the Agent asks him again and pushes the barrel of the Individual further into the back of his head.

“I-I don’t have one,” Kenjiro tells him. “I don’t! I was living in the Lobby! I’ve never been out here.”

There’s a whistle coming from the other side, all one note and low in tone.

“Looks like we don’t know ‘im,” says yellow-mask. “Better luck next time.”

“Yeah, we got places to be and people to meet, so.”

That’s when the shouting increases. It’s like every Agent is shouting and it all echoes inside of his head. He struggles against the hold on him, he wants to get away, but all that does is cause his captor to grow more annoyed with him.

“Stay the fuck where you are,” he warns him.

“Should probably do that, kid,” says black-mask. “It’ll make this next part a lot easier on you.”

Kenjiro has no idea that that means, and luckily for him, he doesn’t have to wait. An Agent gets hit with a laser beam, falls right down to the floor, so does another. The attention comes off from the two hiding behind their car while the remaining three begin to cheer and holler.

“Call a backup patrol,” the one holding him orders, and his voice is so frantic that it actually makes Kenjiro laugh.

It’s low, shouldn’t even be audible, but he hears it, and he’s isn’t happy about it.

“You little sad sack of shit,” he spits out. “I’ll teach you to laugh.”

He brings the butt of Individual down on the back of his head, and then again, and again. He gets three good hits in before he gets hit with a zap and goes slumping down on his own right next to Kenjiro. But it’s not like he can pay much attention to that.

His vision is going again, and that ringing is back and worse than before. He makes out two figures looking down on him, fuzzy around the edges, but he can tell that they’re two more killjoys – one wearing goggles, one with a red and gold bandana hiding the bottom half of their face.

“Kid?” says red-and-gold. “Hey? You there?”

Goggles reaches out for him. He pushes back his hair and grabs his bad arm, but Kenjiro can’t even make a sound.

“His eyes aren’t glassy, and there’s a pulse. But he looks like they’ve been trying to dust him off for a while already.”

“Leo! GH! Get over here!”

Loud. They’re so loud. Kenjiro doesn’t know how much longer he can take the noise. His eyes slip close, and he can’t even fight back against the hands that are gripping his shoulders and shaking him to keep him up.

He’s up though. He can hear them. He wants them to shut up. He wants to go to sleep, but he can still hear them.

“Fuckin’ hell.”

“He looks bad.”

“The hell did they do to him?”

“We gotta get him somewhere.”

“Will he even make it anywhere? We’re too far from the anyone who knows us personally.”

“There’s the wolf den? Queenie never turns anyone away. And they have a death tech.”

“That’s on the other side of the CD though…”

He passes out.

Praise the Phoenix Witch.

It’s hard to tell how much time passes in his state of unconsciousness. Kenjiro is swallowed into a void of oblivion that is the only relief from when he’s sentient enough to feel his body on fire and pain throbbing throughout. Beyond that, he’s unaware of his surroundings, his eyes refusing to open and when he does resurface time and again, it’s to hear small bits of conversation happening around him and only that.

Like:

“The King and Queen left the den for the Sierras for some kind of bargain deal. The death tech went with them.”

“Well, fuck! This kid needs a bed, or he’ll end up on a pyre.”

“The Queen wouldn’t turn them away, and we do kind of know them.”

“Ugh… There’s room for him, but no one knows anything like the death tech does.”

“What if we call our own?”

“Do you have one?”

“Who do we have?”

“Yuko.”

“She’ll come. Where’s your transmission?”

“I’ll show you. Get the kid to the carousel…”

And:

"…and what if the kid’s fever never breaks?”

“We gotta make contact with the library at least. Let someone in the chain know we ain’t dust.”

“You guys can go on ahead, I’ll stay behind.”

“Alone?”

Running footsteps. A door creaks open.

“Hey, Yuko’s here.”

“Only took her like a week.”

“What took you so long?”

“Sorry, there was a kid passed out on the side of the road…”              

Before it all goes quiet again…

The next time Kenjiro wakes up, it’s a lot more pleasant of an experience. For starters, he’s in a bed for the first time in years – sleeping on a makeshift mattress that was really just a scavenged bed sheet stitched up to be stuffed full of cushion stuffing and cloth scraps, doesn’t really count. To follow up on that, he’s cleaned, and even though his body feels like it’s been through the wringer to hell and back, he feels a lot more rested than he has in… well, for as far back as he could remember.

The peace of mind only lasts for about as long as he comes to understand that he doesn’t know where he is. There’s a white curtain on either side of him and a dark blue tarp covering a massive window behind his bed. There’s a chill seeping in from it, wherever he is, it’s colder than it should be, and it’s quieter too, there’s no sound to be heard.

It takes him a lot of effort to sit up. None of his muscles have been used and his joints creak. It’s at this point that not only does he notice the giant carousel just beyond his curtained off room. It startles him, the way the overly large animals in their prancing position stare, it’s not exactly a place he expected to wake up.

There really isn’t time to contemplate that, though. The first signs of life come from beyond the window in the form of heavy footfalls on old wood and a door is creaking open. Kenjiro darts his eyes around in the habit to find the closest weapon, and when he fails to find anything, he braces himself for whatever it is that’s about to come near him.

The door is closed quietly and the nearing footsteps round the right curtain, and they reveal nothing but a killjoy, a mousey looking one at that.

Kenjiro knows what a killjoy looks like. The closest one of them dares to get to Battery is typically the Lobby, and they all look different and the same – bright colors, chapped lips, painted faces or painted hair, and carrying Individuals shined up with glitter. This killjoy, doesn’t really give off that vibe.

He’s a little more muted, looking like someone who could live in the Lobby, and with the goggles around his neck, he could probably even pass as a lab monkey. He’s older than Kenjiro, but he would guess, not that much older.

“You’re awake,” he says instead of any kind of greeting. “Hold on, lemme get Yuko.”

“Wait,” Kenjiro calls out to him – his voice cracked and hoarse. “Wait, don’t go.”

The killjoy stops, doesn’t leave him, but doesn’t say anything either. Neither does Kenjiro for that matter, even though he’s the one that kept here.

In the aftermath of the war, Kenjiro was taught that survival meant to rely only on oneself. With family dying off, and friends selling each other out at any given moment, trust is not something to be easily granted anywhere anyone lived. It’s clearly a lesson, he never fully grasped.

Even with the fallout from the Lobby, he’s caught in the crossroads of trusting the people that brought him here, or to be skeptical of what they want from him.

He wants to trust them.

They saved him.

The more he stares at him, the more he realizes that the killjoy in front of him was the one he remembers taking his pulse. He helped bring him here. They can’t all be bad people.

(There’s a voice in the back of his freshly bandaged head that tells him that he’ll never learn, but he ignores it completely.)

“Where am I?” he ends up asking. “How did I get here?”

The killjoy doesn’t reply, he only looks off to the side, and then behind him from where he appeared to where a door must be.

“Um,” he starts off, sounding uncomfortable to say the least. “Well, you’re in the wolf den, that’s the House of Wolves, formally. Uh, and, we brought you here. My friends and I, I mean. You were dying.”

“Oh… Well, thank you for not letting me die.”

“Well that was actually my friend Yuko, she’s the death tech. We don’t know anything about, y’know, not letting people die.”

The conversation ends after that. The killjoy leaves to grab his friend, and Kenjiro leans back into his bedding and breathes out deeply.

How does he keep getting into these messes?

He doesn’t know that answer, and it doesn’t matter, really. He’s asleep again in 2 seconds flat.

The next time he wakes up, it’s to the soft, smiling face of a woman in a pink jacket and stained overalls sitting by his bed.

“Good morning,” she says to him. “My name is Yuko, what’s yours?”

“Kenjiro,” he replies automatically. “Are you the death tech?”

She smiles at him in a kind and fond way that reminds him of a mother. He trusts her, too.

“That I am,” she says. “You’re very lucky to have survived everything you did. Either the Phoenix Witch or Destroya were looking after you that day, by all accounts, you probably should have died.”

“I’ve been told I’m like a pest that just keeps coming back,” he says, quiet and with a bit a laugh.

She laughs a little with him, reaches over to push his hair back, and pets his hair. His eyes close on their own and he moves in closer to her touch. In the time he’s been out here on his own, he’s never been treated so softly. He’s forgotten what it’s felt like to be cared for.

“That’s good,” she says. “That’s a talent you’re gonna need out here, I won’t lie to you.”

Her hand pulls back, and Kenjiro opens his eyes once more, looks to her and she’s not smiling anymore. She looks sadder than anything else, but the longer he stares the more aware of it she becomes, and in a moment, it passes like it never happened.

“Yuri was telling me what had happened from what he had known,” she tells him. “But your injuries were pretty extensive. Do you remember everything the Dracs did to you? I want to be as thorough with my exams as possible.”

“It wasn’t just the Agents,” he says. “There was… something else going on. I don’t live out in the Zones. I used to live in the Lobby.”

Her mouth thins out into a straight line, and he knows why. Everybody knows what the Lobby carries, he only hopes it doesn’t make her think less of them.

“Well,” she says, eventually, “we’re all criminals in some way or another.”

Her smile comes back, and gradually, so does his.

Kenjiro is confined to bed rest for what feels like years, but is most likely a week or two at most. Towards the end when he’s finally allowed to walk around he takes to walking out onto the board walk, but never going too far out. He doesn’t know the people that inhabit the House of Wolves. They keep to themselves, and when he comes close to approaching any of them, they grow quiet. It’s fine with him, really, he doesn’t know what he would say anyway.

So, instead, he wanders on his own, always keeping to larger paths and never going inside of anything. The small commune is all on a beach pier from Before, and the boardwalk expands all the way out into the ocean, some of it blasted away and in disrepair, but most of it still intact. There’s always some form of construction going on, underneath it, he figures it must be everyone living here trying to keep it stable and standing. There are fishing boats and nets lined on the beach, fire pits and tables are set up and there’s the ever-present scent of roasted fish that travels on the wind.

Kenjiro enjoys watching them. He likes their sense of community even if he can’t really be a part of it. It’s like watching the families when crawling around on his belly in the Interior for supplies and wondering if they were as happy as they looked, but also if it really mattered because they still had each other and a home to go back to.

He watches them until he gets too nostalgic and back tracks. His feet thud quietly on the thick and ancient planks of wood and he goes back the same way he came; right underneath a decimated structure of steel beams. The color on them is faded by now, looking a pale gold in the sunlight and some of it still raps around this side of the boardwalk. It even stretches out to curve around a half blown away Ferris wheel. He stops to stare, not for the first time, wondering what it looked like before all this.

“It used to be a roller coaster. It was part of like a small carnival.”

The sudden voice spooks him, has him jump, but he recognizes it. There’s only two people who speak to him here, and if it’s not Yuko, then it must be Yuri.

And he’s right. Kenjiro shuffles towards the entrance of the carousel when Yuri is standing. He’s not looking at him in a judging way, nothing to show that he disproves of Kenjiro’s wanderings, and he’s not hustling him back in for bed rest. He reminds Kenjiro of a cat in some ways; he’s seen when he wants to be seen, and he observes more than he interacts.

“The boardwalk,” he continues the closer Kenjiro gets. “It used to be Santa Monica Pier. If you walk up the incline, you can still kind of see the overhead sign, but most of it was taken out. Probably from a pig bomb.”

He kind of remembers. He’d never been here in the Before, but he kind of remembers its existence.

“I’d never been here,” Kenjiro confesses. “When I was a kid.”

“Me neither,” says Yuri. “It was always really crowded, and I lived on a beach anyway, so I was never really interested.”

Yuri… He doesn’t know what to make of Yuri. He likes Yuko, she’s been nothing but kind to him, and he knows that Yuri and she are friends – good ones at that – but still… He acts as her assistant when she comes to change out his bandages and check his vitals, and he doesn’t speak. He knows that he was one of those that brought him here, he’s the one that called Yuko, he’s the one that’s stayed behind even though it’s apparent that he is somebody out here.

Except he’s here with him now, so, he can’t be a bad person. Not if he cares even to the smallest degree to stay behind.

So, he’s comfortable around him, at the least, even if Yuri doesn’t know how to hold a conversation properly, he can allow him to be himself.

Yuri helps shuffles along him when he goes back into the carousel and back to his bed. He watches, but doesn’t interfere with Kenjiro climbing back underneath his sheets, and he appreciates not being treated like an invalid.

“Yuko says that you’ll be able to get out of here in about another week,” he tells him. “She went out to the transmission room to see if there’s any way to get another saline bag out here on the next chain run, but if she can’t, she’ll figure something out. She’s good at that. She’ll be in for a vitals check, but yeah, you’re looking better.”

“I feel better,” Kenjiro replies. “At the very least.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Silence.

That’s about normal.

“Um…” Yuri falters. It’s kind of endearing in a way. He kind of looks like a skittish, meek kind of man, but he’s able to take down a squad of Agents without any hesitation. It’s a little admirable. “Do you need a ride back home? Or, is there anyone who can get you? I- Well, I don’t even know where you live, so-?”

“No… No, I don’t have anyone. But I… I don’t know where to go after this.”

“But then... where will you go?”

Kenjiro does not answer him at first. He falls further back into his pillow, turns his head to the side, and watches the way the sunlight hits against the sheet covered walls and catches dust floating in the air.

“I don’t know,” he sighs after a long minute and turns back to look at Yuri. “I can’t go back to the Lobby. That’s where I used to live, if you didn’t know. And honestly, I don’t know if I would want to if I even could.”

Yuri looks like he doesn’t know what to say to that. His eyes dart away and they both sit in silence before they finally make their way back to Kenjiro’s direction, and even then, all he says is: “I’ve never been to the Lobby.”

“It’s a hell hole,” Kenjiro tells him, honestly. “It’s basically the slums of Battery because what they don’t tell you about Battery City, is that yeah, it’s a great utopia, with a great slogan: the aftermath is secondary. Makes you not wanna worry, makes you think that Battery City has everything you’ll ever need, just be productive, but without those capsules it all falls apart. So, they use the Lobby to scare you into taking them. Take them or end up in the crater with the rest that can’t afford to live in the Interior. Live on the outside, next to the Acid Pools and peddlers and fallen droids.

“There’s no funding, no money, and raids every week. You learn to hide what you really do just so they can leave you alone. Everyone lives in whatever they can build and sometimes they end up kicked out because someone with more power and muscle comes in and decides it’s where they’re gonna build a lab. And in the end, the only option is to work for them just so you can sleep in the room built next to it made out of cardboard and plywood.”

His rant leaves him a little breathless by the time he gets through he’s leaning up on his arms and breathing in a little heavily. His throat is scratchy, and he’s about ready to as for a glass of water when Yuri is already pressing one into his hands. He takes it gratefully, downs half of it in one go and hands it back before

“I lived in the Lobby after the military camps,” he says. “I was only a kid when I made the choice to break off. They were taking the kids into Battery but… I can’t explain it. We were refugees, and there were always rumors about what happened to them inside the city. They were promising us new families, identities, and a future, but I… I didn’t want to lose my identity. I didn’t want to lose who I was. I liked who I was, I still do. Even if I am soft-hearted. Weak. That’s what everyone thought. I tried not to care too much though, I tried to just do my business and survive, it’s why I ran away, so I had to do my best.”

He smiles, a little self-deprecating one, and shrugs.

“Guess my best wasn’t good enough.”

The statement makes Yuri look away and his mouth pulls down into a frown, mostly likely he’s not uncomfortable with Kenjiro’s own self-assessment. But he doesn’t feel like it’s wrong. Maybe if he was just a little more callous, just a little more selfish –

“That… It was still good enough.”

Yuri’s reply surprises him. Mostly because, well, he made one. He didn’t think he would get a comforting word out of him, he’s not like Yuro with her parental aura, so it’s a little shocking.

“I mean,” he goes on to say. “You survived. Isn’t that what matters? Getting out alive?”

Well, when it’s put that way…

“Yeah,” Kenjiro sighs. “I guess so. Wish I coulda done more though, instead of just getting out on my own.”

And then, Yuri says something that Kenjiro never thought he would hear. He asks, “Are you talkin’ about that girl? The droid, I mean?”

Kenjiro groans tiredly and turns his head away, back the filtered sunlight and swears he can see fingertips reaching for those dust mites in the silhouettes of the skinny bits of window panes making their shadows.

“Her name was Cinnamon Margaret,” Kenjiro replies, automatically, exhausted. “That’s what she wanted to be called.”

“Not a lot of people would go out of their way to help out a droid.”

He doesn’t say it with any kind of tone other than just factual. Because he’s right, not a lot of people would go out of their way when they have to worry very much about themselves first. Kenjiro has a bleeding heart, again, it’s a fault.

He turns his head back, makes eye contact with Yuri. He needs to show that he absolutely means what he says.

"She was a droid," he does say. "But she still felt. She still wanted things. She wanted to leave. I knew what that felt like, too. We were all being used, and it’s a flaw, I guess, but I just wanted to help.”

Yuri doesn’t say anything, at least not with his words.

Kenjiro has been quick to pick up that Yuri wears his emotions openly – his eyes are expressive, and his body language is open. With the resigned little sigh and downcast eyes, the way he picks at loose threads snagged in the sheets, it appears that Kenjiro’s not the only one incapable of having a hardened outlook to the terrors of this brave, new world.

Kindness is not a forgotten lore from yesterday. It’s still here and he benefitted from it.

And after all, if they’ve all been able to survive while being kind to him as such, maybe he can still survive, too.

“There’s nothing wrong with helping,” Yuri says, eventually. “It’s easy to second guess yourself, but logically, we’re better off helping each other. All we really have out here is each other.”

Kenjiro smiles.

Yeah, maybe.

.

.

.

.

.

.

who             .

                knows           .

                                not             .

                                                me              .

                                                                we              .

                                                                                never            .

                                                                                                lost             .

                                                                                                                control           .

                                                                                                                                your             .

                                                                                                                                                face             .

                                                                                                                                                                to              .

                                                                                                                                                                                face             .              

                                                                                                                                                                                with             .

                                                                                                                                                                the              .

                                                                                                                                                man             .

                                                                                                                                who             .

                                                                                                                sold             .

                                                                                                the              .

                                                                                       world         .

                                                                                .

                                                                .

                                                .

                                .

                .

.

.

.

.

.

.

* * *

 

_“News from the Zones, tumbleweeds: Crows have taken out the bulk of The Lobby and leveled it out – steam rolled to high heaven and pancaked all over. No doubt as a part of the ever expanding borders drawn up by the tyrannical regime we all love to boo and hiss. So, be on the look out for bandits and rogue droids out in the wastelands, my dust angels. It looks like there’s gon’ be all sorts of new fire fights and scraps in the days to come.”_

_hiss!_

_"So it's time to hit the red line and upthrust the volume up there. Keep your boots tight, keep your gun close, and die with your mask on if you’ve got to. Protect what's yours, and I'll protect what's mine. Now, here, is the traffic.”_

 

* * *

When Mila parks the truck next behind their shelter, Yuri is the first to get out and starts going on about needing to dunk his head in the basin inside. She lets him, he probably needs it after all. Ragtown isn't exactly known for their cool climate - it's not like Halcyon, sitting on their higher elevation, or The Springs, being closer to the shore and spaced out more openly. No, Ragtown is a diesel town filled with engineers, innovators, and mechanics. It's usually humid and crowded and there's not much ventilation once you're in the nitty gritty center of it all.

It's not a great time for someone with Yuri's personal aesthetics, even less so when the temperature is already hitting the triple digits. He needs a cool down.

Instead of worrying after him, she rushes a hand through her freshly washed hair and rubs at the fresh shave of her undercut. It really is freeing, she’s sure she’s at least 10 degrees cooler than Yuri.

Her brief moment of happiness is just that, as she hears the clang of metal and voices escalating. Victor and Georgi are probably fighting about ashes again. She rolls her eyes. Boys are stupid. She gets out and slams the door behind her, it’s time to break them up and put them on time out.

Sure enough, the closer she gets, the more she’s able to make out, and it’s exactly what she thought.

"Do you know what ashes even are?" Victor is asking him, exasperated and gesturing madly. "It's nothing, Georgi! Ashes are nothing! There is literally nothing worth any kind of nutrient value in any of these, so no, when you say that they help the garden grow, I sure as hell am not gonna believe you!"

"Then the explain the watermelons, Victor!" Gerogi is arguing back just as vehemently. "Explain to me why they started growing after I added ashes to the fertilizer."

“And how many have you grown since that day?”

“It’s only none because you keep hogging all of the ashes over here.”

"Do I have to bring up seventh grade science here? Is that what I'm going to have to do?"

As enjoyable as all of this usually is, it's far too hot for her to want to deal with any kind of their pettiness today.

"I just wanna take the time to remind both of you that any education you had in the Before is outdated at worse and irrelevant at best," she says. "I'm pretty sure. Most likely. Definitely, a strong definitely."

The interruption does its job, it cuts off their argument and has them round their attention on her. Mila, with her hands on her hips, exudes her authority over the matter. Her word is law, and their expressions match their annoyance with it.

"I don’t think that's how science works," Victor tells her.

"Like you would know, Mr Fashion Major," Georgi bites out, still pettily trying to win this fight.

"Oh, I'm sorry," says Victor, "I forgot that the two weeks of ROP classes you dropped out of completely outranks me."

Mila rolls her eyes and throws the rubber tubing at Georgi. She doesn't bother to warn him, and he ends up fumbling with it before actually catching it, holds it close to his chest as if he's afraid it's going to miraculously jump out of his arms on its own and stares at her, questioningly.

"Go start fixing your aqueduct," she tells him. "I'll get ya damn ashes for ya. Both of y'really need to stop fighting, y'know. It's too damn hot for this."

Georgi seems to take the dismissal – after all, it is too hot for spats like this. He scoffs his frustration off and takes his tubing off to his garden, and as Mila watches him walk away, Victor turns back to his work and picks his paddle back up.

The bubbling of the water sifting through the ashes is louder now that the petty squabbling has stopped. Mila watches in silence as Victor goes back to skimming the top of it and grimaces. She’s not even doing it herself, but she can just feel the heat radiating from the fire. Still, the illusion of discomfort isn’t enough to distract her from the fact that Victor is still looking plenty preoccupied with his thoughts, and she’s pretty sure that it’s not the argument with Georgi that’s on his mind.

“You look heated,” she tells him, breaking that slice of tranquility around them with a conversation. “And I don’t think it’s the sun.”

“It’s nothing,” he says, and pauses to wipe away the sweat on his forehead.

Mila rolls his eyes. Every time it’s nothing, it’s something, and she feel like she’s repeating herself, but it really is too hot for this.

She stands closer to him, doesn’t hesitate to put a hand on his arm and stops him in the middle of his work. For a brief second Victor fixes her with a glare, but Mila doesn’t pay it any mind. She only tilts her head in a way that asks if he’s serious and he looks away entirely.

“What’s going on?” she asks. “Don’t make me pin you, I will suplex you.”

She gets a small laugh out of him, and it’s enough. He shakes her grip off and runs both of his dirty hands through his very, very sweaty hair. It makes Mila’s nose scrunch up, but she doesn’t say anything about it, he has been working hard after all.

“A transmission came through earlier,” he tells her. “From the Halcyon base. The supplies that are smuggled out of Battery are gonna be delayed. No one knows for how long, Sunflower needs to find a new route without the Lobby.”

“We heard about that on the way back, Dr D said something about Crows giving it a level. What happened there?”

“No idea,” Victor shrugs, and goes back to work. Lye has collected at the top of the bubbling water and he skims it off easily. “The Executive is probably just expanding like they always have. Besides the Lobby was always going to be taken out eventually, it’s just inconvenient since, y’know, the chain always used it for trade and stuff like the power pup and other canned stuff. Ragtown is gonna be hit hard with the lack of scrap metal and oil.”

“Hmm… Sounds like we’re gonna have to go back to trading with Tommy upfront for a while.”

That makes Victor groan. There’s a history there that Mila doesn’t really know about, it happened before her time with them. She’s tried asking Georgi and Yuri about it once after Victor had come back from a trade deal in a sour mood, but Georgi didn’t have any answers for her and Yuri told her to mind her own business, so, she’s never found out.

“The man has an infinite supply of power pup and I don’t know where he gets it from,” he says.

“I’m thinking of our ice supply and you’re thinking of dog food. Typical.”

“You’ve been hanging around Yuri too much.”

“Maybe,” she laughs. “But he needs a good role model to mentor him.”

“Did you find him one?”

“Woow! And I was gonna be the great person I am and comfort you on the lack of a chain run in this trying time of ours.”

“The flower chain is still going to come around. We’re just going to have to rely on Zone suppliers is all. I feel like if we’re not careful, it’s gonna cut into our rations. Depending on what we see from the wolf den and Halcyon, we might wanna be a little more careful with what we give away too.”

“We’ve always given what we could though. Foodwise, I mean.”

“Yeah, but I’m thinking everyone is gonna be thinking the same way, it’s probably gonna be like it was at the beginning again.”

“I don’t remember what it was like at the beginning. I didn’t take any part of it.”

“It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad. People were just a little more selfish with giving up what they had, but Sunflower said that was to be expected. We live in a way that either depends on hoarding or each other after all. The flower chain really helped unite the communities.”

“That reminds me,” she says. “Since you brought up the flower chain, you’ll never guess what I found out today.”

"Are you teasing me, or do you actually know something?"

"You gave Sara your name."

That definitely changes the tone of their conversation, but it's been on her mind since they left the diner. She can't stop thinking about Sara's new codename. Because for her to have chosen a name that should have already been taken (because as far as Mila remembers, violets were once a common flower to be seen) and been granted said name without any hesitation, from what she could gather, it must have been given to her. And for her to not know who she spoke to, there's only one person who could have interviewed her.

"Well," Victor says after a brief pause. "Yes. I did. I wasn't using it."

"You could always-"

"No."

Mila sighs. Well, he's being short with her, and she's probably not going to get anything else out of him today. May as well go back to teasing him. She shakes off the conversation and lets a smile slip on to her face easily. Time to get Georgi those ashes he wanted.

"Speaking of flowers though, there was a couple of other we ran into at the diner."

He gives her a long side glance. There’s no doubt to what she’s hinting at when he gets into her playful mood with him. There’s only one thing she teases him about. “What do you know?”

Her devious smile grows larger. “As it so happens, before we made our great descent unto Ragtown, Yuri and I had lunch at the diner and guuueeeess who we ran into?”

“Which ones?” he asks.

“ _Ukon_ and _Shiragiku_! I was pretty sad that _Ichiyo_ wasn’t there, but she was probably spending some time with her kids

Victor drops his paddle and approaches her like a wild cat of old stalking it’s prey. She takes a few steps back but does nothing to keep him from catching up to her, nor does she stop him from placing his hands on her shoulders to keep her still. He’s so far gone, it’s hilarious.

“What did you learn?” he asks.

She smiles so wide her eyes almost crinkle shut. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Mila!” he wails and nearly slumps over her. “That’s not fair. You know I don’t have much in this pitiful life out here –“

“Wow, really rude, I’m right here.”

“ – let me know the little things about the most beautiful man roaming the wastelands.”

Victor suddenly gets this dreamy look on his face, and he’s not even making eye contact with her as he stares off into the distance and says, wistfully, “Roaming, wandering, a lost tumbleweed surviving by fighting and using his incredible strength worked hard by the sinuous muscle rippling underneath his tight shirts.”

“Okay, now I’m uncomfortable and I’m going inside.”

“Mila!”

Mila only laughs and bats him away. He’s so sad, he really is.

“I’ll tell you this much,” she says. “He likes power pup, so you’re both gross. He probably likes dogs, at least that’s what Yuri says. He used to live by the beach in the Before, and he still kinda does, neither one really said where they lived. He used to work the route going back and forth to the Sierra’s. Him and Chris kinda hang out a lot, oh, he’s seen that poster of you, by the way, couldn’t get an actual opinion of it, though. And he looks really sexy with his hair pushed back.”

He looks as though he’s greatly considering the last one and she beams at him. “Satisfied?”

His hands drop from her shoulders and he gestures his hand out in the air in a nonchalant manner before going back to his work. “For the moment.”

“Tsk! Greedy.”

“When it comes to him, always,” he laughs.

“You really got it bad. Almost makes me feel like a villain to keep something from you.”

Now, Victor apparently had been content with the information, he was willing to go back to work and file away all the new information in that creepy little folder of everything else he’s filed away in that odd little head of his, but now? Now, there’s something else on the line. Something apparently, very good.

“What else do you know?” he asks, but this time, his eyes are narrowed. She’s up to her games, and he knows it well.

Mila flips her hair off to the side and sways back and forth on her heels. “Code names can be so finicky with people you know, y’know? Eventually, we all just share the ones from Before if we got ‘em, don’t’ we?”

“Mila?”

“I learned his name.”

It’s like ripping a bandaid off with a delayed reaction. Victor stares at her and she does nothing but stare back. That is until his entire body tenses up and his eyes widen comically. She can’t help the smile that creeps up on her face.

“You did not,” he accuses, but she knows he’s unsure. She has the bad habit of surprising him in ways that do not benefit him in the slightest.

“ _Ukon_ ’s name is Kenjiro, and _Ichiyo_ ’s name is Yuko,” she happily informs him. “I reached that level of friendship with them, I suppose. I learned all three.”

“What’s his name.” There’s no pretense

Mila only hums. “Names are sacred out here, Victor, especially the ones from the Before, it’s from a whole different life, you know that. Some feel like it’s a sacred right of trust to bestow that knowledge on another runner. Who am I to break that? What will the Phoenix Witch think of me, for breaking the laws of her land and harming one of her children?”

Victor gives her the most unimpressed look, he’s ever given her in the time they’ve known each other, and it makes her giddy inside.

“Are you serious?” he asks. “You just gave me the other two!”

“There are just some rules that are unspoken, after all,” she goes on like she didn’t even hear him speak and begins to scamper off towards their shelter. “And I am but a pawn out here in the desert, I am nobody to break them!”

“Wait-Mila! You’re really not going to tell me?! Mila?!”

"You gonna give Georgi those ashes he asked for."

"Are you serious?!"

Mila reaches the door and flings it open while tossing him a grin.

"Maybe!" she shouts, and slams it shut behind her.

She leans against it and laughs. She can hear his spluttering out there, he's no doubt collecting whatever it was Georgi wanted. She sighs. Content.

He’s just too fun to rile up.

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -WHY WAS THIS SO LONG? THE ANSWER IS: I DON'T KNOW WHY IT WAS SO LONG W O W
> 
> -um, i thought about splitting in half but... i didn't. i don't blame anyone for tapping out halfway.
> 
> -so, why the minami backstory? why watch him go through all that? well... i don't believe the aftermath is secondary, there's a reason and a following consequence for all things that happen which are both integral to each other. cause and effect are a cosmic balance and carry reason.
> 
> -that is just a vague explanation but that's all i got for you.
> 
> -So... concert is next chapter. should be fun.
> 
> -that's all i got for now, keep running, stay shiny, i'm out xoxo
> 
>  _ETA_ : recently my cat passed away after complications from diabetes, pancreatitis, and breast cancer. we did all we could for my baby, but naturally, her little body just couldn't withstand it all, and so it goes. anyway, i'm catching up to what i've already written for this fic, i had stopped writing when it got really bad and the past couple of months i haven't written anything, so if there are delays in this (i know i said i'm posting the first of every month but i honestly thought it would be fine then) i'm sorry. i'm steadily getting back to writing this and my other fics again. everything was put on hold when i started taking care of her full time. anyway, i actually don't know how many people are reading this, it's such a niche genre, but yeah, just wanted to throw that out there.


	4. 人生は短いです！ だから踊ろう！

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So, did you know that there isn't actually a Missile Kid?"  
> "What?"  
> "Yeah, apparently Mad Gear had this prophetic dream of a killjoy born to the Zones by Destoya's will and is the chosen one to restore peace and tranquility. So, he leaves an empty place on stage for them."  
> "Can I just say.... that I think Mad Gear has a thing for Destroya?"  
> "I mean, say what you want, but the song he wrote for her is a fuckin' banger."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Official BLI Statement
> 
> As a response to the rising number of citizens engaging in illegal personal presentation, Better Living Industries reminds you that any personal appearance must follow the guidelines found in your BLI guidebook. Restrictions concerning dress include color (example: any form of red, green, blue, or yellow is illegal and clothing with these colors will be confiscated), fit, length, and thread. Inappropriate clothing is not tolerated by Better Living Industries. Body modification is also regarded with a zero-tolerance attitude. Any citizens who decide to dress against BLI regulations will be apprehended.
> 
> Please contact a BLI representative if you have any information regarding such criminals, and keep smiling!
> 
> Have a nice day!

_“Oh ho! Fun times are here again! The Zone 5 Fun Fair is back! Bring the kids for rides, games, free radiation screening from the waist up, and all the clean water you can drink.”_

_“This Friday in the Gladiator Arena, they’re bringing out the returning champions Billy Buttermilk and Syphila Bludgeon. Make sure not to miss out on the murder scene that’s certain to be since Madam Bludgeon is thirsty for that sweet revenge after their last stand off.”_

_krrst!_

_“And last, but not least, a special treat for all the hungry music fiends! Live from the Dust Bowl, this Saturday night, a regular melody of ultrasonic vibes brought to us by the shiny minds and fingers of our Zones finest, hosted and headlined by none other than the beloved Mad Gear and Missile Kid. Be sure to rev up that party if you can, and if not, yours truly will be bringing the live action croons through the airwaves for your ears to groove, don’t you worry about that.”_

_krrst!_

_In the meantime, let's get back to the good ol’ fun in the sun with a summertime jam here on WKIL, home of the slaughtermatic sounds.”_

_…_

_‘_ [ _I left the house left the room with the foxy on my back…_ ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-aAaD7SyUQ) _’_

 

* * *

 

Victor doesn’t really do too much business with Tommy Chow Mein these days. They haven’t been neighbors for a long time, not since the Joy-Strip take-over of yesteryear, but every now and again, there’s a call from him looking for a fix-up on his suit, or even vice versa with Victor asking about leads on where to find some basic supplies that can’t be found by just anyone.

(He’s a wayward shaman in that regard, if it comes to something that can’t be tracked down by anyone, ask Tommy. He’ll know where to find it.)

Since the destruction of the Lobby, business for him seems to be booming. Victor pulls up and finds all sorts of crowds hanging around the outside of his storefront (something he hired a bunch of Joys from Ragtown to construct for him out of metal sheets and brick walls) like it’s some kind of mall from the                         Before.

He pulls in as close as he can get and grabs the garment bag in the passenger’s seat. He’s not going to lie, he doesn’t have to dress up his delivery with something as formal as wrapping up the tired and worn suit like this, but when he’s feeling particularly petty, it’s nice to remind Tommy that no one can keep him dressed as nicely as Victor can.

Getting into the shop is a feat in itself; again, there’s a crowd to push through and once inside it doesn’t get any better. Killjoys and all else that live out here are browsing the shelves, blocking the aisles, and generally just getting in the way of everyone else. There’s no point in asking anyone to budge over, the noise level of the place would just drown it out. Victor just continues to plow right through, head held high and at a pace that demands people to move aside for him. It works well enough and he’s at the front counter quick enough. He spots who he’s looking for easy enough and waits until she’s done with a customer before he calls to her.

When she’s free, he clears his throat and shouts, “Blue!”

It does the trick, and the droid swivels her head over to him, making some of the bright blue strands of synthetic hair slip out from the black headband and frame her slim white face. She smiles and says, “V! You here to see Tommy?”

“Got his suit done,” he tells her, and even holds the bag up as proof. “He in the office?”

“Yeah, he’s back there,” she tells him. “You can go on in.”

“Thanks. How’s Red?”

The mention on her girlfriend always lights up her face, and it’s always the pure emotion displayed that makes Victor wonder why anyone would deem it acceptable to treat droids like they were any less than human.

“She’s doing much better lately,” she says. “Tommy was able to locate us a crate of plus for her and he said he wouldn’t charge me for it. Well, not really, I am working more without extra pay, so I guess I am paying for it, but anything for Red, y’know?”

“Yeah, that sounds like him. But it’s good to hear she’s doing better.”

“It really is,” she says, and it’s wistful.

There’s the unspoken fear of Red’s demise. Her illness is not something that can be kept away just by new plus batteries, like all droids, the only cure is new parts and routine updates. And just like with all droids out here, and even with her status as a top-tier pornodroid, Red isn’t able to access any of that, or at least not easily.

Although, to tell the truth, even if she was able to live the cushioned life she should have had within Battery, Red is an older model, one of the first generations put out for service. It’s hard to say that she would still be with them, regardless of status.

That’s Battery after all.

Out with the old, in with the new.

The aftermath is secondary.

“Well, anyway, I’m busy, you’re probably busy, you should probably head on back there and give Tommy his stuff.”

“Yeah, I should,” Victor agrees. “Take care, Blue.”

“You too. Oh! And tell Vendetta we need our transmission tuned up again, I’ll touch up her roots for her in exchange.”

“I’ll tell her, but letting you know, she just got a cut in Ragtown.”

“She can have the box of bolts and bits then, we just need it fixed.”

She waves him away, then, taking on another customer with a tall rainbow colored mohawk and Victor ducks behind their counter to get to Tommy’s office. The only thing separating him from the rest of the store front is a wooden door that looks like it had been torn off from a tall wooden fence and mounted onto ill-fitted hinges. It neither reaches the top or the bottom of the frame, and it wobbles a little as Victor swings it open. He’s learned by now to hold on to the top part of it to keep it steady, and he does just that when stepping into Tommy’s office.

He doesn’t know if he had his own private room decorated in the same way back during their Joy-Strip days, but probably not. His own space out here far away enough to ensure some kind of safety has made it easier for him to decorate with a salvaged Persian rug and some odd water colored splattered tarps framed and hung up like precious artworks. His desk, stained and patchy from years of mistreatment before being found and moved here, is covered in slips of paper, a bag of carbons, and his transmission, which is currently being in use by the man himself.

He holds his finger up at Victor, the universal symbol to remain quiet until his call has ended and says into the receiver bit of his radio, “That’s all fine and good if we were dealing with some low-level punks scrapping over turf, but what we got on our hands is a hostile takeover and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be the one to supply everyone on their way to the Mailbox.”

“Good thing that you’re already damned living out here,” says a voice from the other side of the connection, and Victor recognizes it as Dr Death Defying.

“No one is damned,” says another voice, and Victor stands straighter. It’s been a while since he’s heard Sunflowers strong yet delicate tones, even though the static clinging through the transmission call makes her sound more fragile than usual. “But Tommy, I’m not going to lie, you’re not entirely wrong. We need supplies, and you’re a provider, I am counting on you to help us, with pay, of course.”

“Of course,” Dr D scoffs.

“Not everyone is so ready to jump for the good of the cause, good doctor,” Tommy says. “Some of us like living.”

“What good is living, if you don’t do what’s right?”

“What good is living, if all you do is try to end up dead?”

"Of course. Everybody wants to change the world, but no one wants to die."

"I don't need, nor want to change the world that badly."

“We’re not discussing the moral high road here, gentleman,” says Sunflower. “In the end, we’re talking about survival, and that’s where the topic should stay. I’m not enlisting you Tommy, you remain on the outskirts, and I’m not asking you to go out of your way. I’m only asking, whenever it’s possible, if you can grab some extra items we will need in the coming danger days, to please supply us.”

They all wait with baited breath, even Victor, who is able to watch Tommy run a palm down over his tired face and scrape against the stubble on his chin.

“Yeah, alright,” he finally says. “But I’m getting paid.”

“Of course,” says Sunflower. “Well,then, with that taken care of, I’ll be on my way. Some of my petals are calling at my door as well as duty.”

“I gotta get back to the waves, I can’t keep letting News answer calls, not after last time.”

They both sign off, Tommy hangs up and pushes the machine off to the side. He ends up leaning back in his chair and regards Victor lazily.

“Agent Valkyrie,” he greets, and Victor instantly balks.

“Is there a reason for the formality today, Mr Chow Mein?” he asks.

“It’s just nice is all,” he says, “to remember who you are out here, after all.”

“Hm. It’s also nice to remember that things out here change.” He thrusts his arm out with the bag and shakes it a bit for Tommy to take. “And they can change fast.”

“You’re telling me.” Tommy takes his time in getting out of his seat. When he does, there’s a distinct pop sound and a groan that goes along with it.

“Wasn’t it you, once upon a time ago, that told me to do myself the favor and not get old?”

Tommy doesn’t rise to the bait and only grunts, “And you didn’t listen, did ya?”

Before Victor can even begin to feel offended, (He’s definitely not that old. And he doesn’t look that old. Does he look that old? No, of course not.) Tommy grabs at the bag and unzips it. He ignores Victor’s small little noises of protest as the bag falls to the floor and he takes to inspecting it.

It’s the same routine each time – the big show of feeling the fabric, testing the color against the one he’s already wearing, matching the hemlines, the length of the sleeves, the whole nine yards. It all ends the same, Victor’s making and repairing the same suit for what feels like an age.

“Nice work,” he finally announces, and it’s all the praise he gets.

“Of course it is,” Victor replies. “I did it.”

He gets no reply to that, but he can imagine the eye roll happening and it’s satisfying all the same.

“I’ll put the payment on your tab.”

“You said you’d have the money ready by delivery.”

“And after the haul from today, I will. Didn’t you see the crowd walking in? We’re raking in the dough.”

“Or the thieves.”

“Blue’s got it covered, she’s a sharp droid.”

“Whatever. I need the razors though. No one in that hovel looks good with a beard.”

Tommy gives him a side glance that lingers just a little too long on the growth sprouting from his jawline and chuckles. “You got that right.”

He hangs the suit up on a rack behind his desk while Victor rubs his jawline. When he said that, he didn’t mean himself, but maybe he should shave it off anyway…

“Take ‘em,” says Tommy and tosses the pack his way. Victor catches them easy enough and stashes them in a pocket inside his jacket. “My regards to your brother.”

“Will do! He sends his love, as always.”

There goes Tommy’s infamous eye roll, once again. He opens a drawer from the desk and brings out a battered old leather-bound journal and tosses it on the desktop in Victor’s direction.

“Just sign the ledger,” he says. “Get outta here, the less I gotta stare at your mug, the shinier my day will be.”

“Soundin’ like a real crash kid there for a milquetoast minute, old man.”

“Shuddap.”

He throws a pen at Victor’s head, and that’s caught easily as well. Although, it wouldn’t have been a problem if he had missed and sent it flying. If there’s one thing Tommy doesn’t lack is pens. Victor doesn’t know where he gets them from, because not all of them are BLI standard issued, but it’s just one of those Tommy Mystery he supposes. He opens it up to the back, already signing his signature mark, times and dates it, what he dropped off, and what the payment is, all of this is just standard protocol that he knows by heart. He’s so wrapped up in the pattern of it all, that he almost doesn’t hear Tommy speak, but that could also be because of how quietly he says it, more of a whisper than a mutter.

“It’s my birthday today, y’know,” he says, and for a second, Victor wasn’t sure if he was meant to hear it at all.h

But he does, and Tommy knows he does. It’s the only reason why he watched Victor the way he does. Passively, but alert enough to act if what he gets back is a reaction deemed unfavorable. Its unsettling how a man of his age is able to portray himself just on the side of vulnerable and yet still hostile. Victor, for all that he is, responds in the manner he only knows.

“My condolences,” he says with a finished flourish and set the journal aside. “If things were like Before, you’d be well retired by now.”

Tommy’s eye twitches. “Keep aging me, that’d put you at around 60.”

“You are not five years older than me!”

“Believe what you want. I turn 34 today.”

Victor narrows his eyes. “I get the feeling that you turned 34 last year and the year before that, and maybe even the year before that.”

“Yeah, well, we can’t all be 17 forever. You proved the hell out of that.”

Now it’s Victor’s eye that twitches. “I’ll send Vendetta for the payment, Blue needs her to fix her transmission, so she’ll be over here anyway.”

“Good, she’s the more sensible outta you lot.”

“You should quit hiding back here and actually help out the store. It’s your name on the sign.”

He leaves after that. It’s how they usually conduct business – been that way for some time now, and it works for them.

(They don’t really mean any ill-will towards each other, it’s just how they are.)

Victor shouts a quick goodbye to Blue, who only waves at him since she’s arguing rather loudly and doing her best to tower over a group of burners gesturing over spray cans. They’re loud, but nothing compares to Tommy slamming his door open and shouting at all of them to shut their mouths and calm down already. That’s enough to send Victor ducking out of the shop quick enough, he’s not like the others who have stopped whatever they’re doing to gawk; he’s done his job and now he’s out.

He’s moving through quick though, doesn’t even notice someone rushing in the same time he’s rushing out and it’s a collision course that almost knocks both of them off their feet. He grabs on to their shoulders, keeping them steady and keeping his feet planted. His eyes widen just a little, when he finally notices who it was he ran in to.

“Oh! Victor! How are you?”

It’s Ichiyo, dressed as she normally is minus the stripe across her eyes. She must not be on duty right now, but it’s just a little odd to see her without the paint on her face.

“Good,” he responds automatically, and then ushers her to the side before they could be trampled by some kids running into the shop. “How are you doing?”

“Great! Have you heard about the show this weekend?”

Victor gets semi-distracted by hearing Tommy shout at the kids about grabbing his wares. Some things never change…

“Hm? Oh, yeah, I think I heard about that. Mila was listening in to Dr D and talking about it.”

“It feels like it’s been forever since we heard Dr Death Defying at home. My girls are obsessed with DJ Hot Chimp, right now. But yes, speaking of.”

She pulls a flyer out from the stack in her hands and waves at him for take. He does so and looks over it, seeing it to just be a flyer for the upcoming show. There are logos for Mad Gear and the Missile Kid as well as other Zone bands probably coming up from the Grove. He sees that Otabek is going to be headlining, as well. Yuri’s going to go, he’s sure of that.

“My girls are gonna be on stage,” she tells him. “With Mad Gear, they have a song together.”

Victor has so many questions; mainly how, when, and why? But all that comes out of his mouth is, “What?”

Ichiyo laughs, something light and bright. She looks happy - happier than he’s ever seen her before.

“I know,” she says. “It sounds crazy. But, long story - short, we were at Vaya's and Vamos' record shop and their escalating argument over which vinyl to trade for actually bought them a gig. Mad Gear was in the shop, and I don't know what he thought when he heard them screeching, but then again, he's never been conventional with his creative process.”

Victor doesn’t know Mad Gear personally, but he does know what the runners in the Grove are like, and he does know the reputation the man holds (They all know that the Missile Kid isn't even anyone in his band, but rather a place holder for a prophetic vision, talks about being extra.), and it really is believable. That’s just how it goes.

“Well, that’s one way to get into show business around here.”

“I’m just glad they want to do something other than trying to smuggle blasters out of the house.”

“I don’t know, I still agree with them on that. They should know how to shoot by now.”

“Maybe. They’re only ten."

"That's almost adulthood out here."

"I hate that you're right about that. Well, in any case, we all agreed that after the curtains mishap, they have to wait longer before getting one of their own.”

Well, to that he doesn’t know what to say. He’s never had to parent anyone other than Yuri, and he got him when he was already more or less house trained and carrying on his own. The most he’s ever had to do with him was threatening to feed him nothing but Power Pup if he kept shooting holes in the walls when he was bored.

That put a stop to that quick enough.

“You should come,” she tells him, picking back up on the topic of the concert. “Bring the whole family. You get in free if you were short shorts, otherwise it’s four carbons, but that’s still not bad.”

“I haven’t worn short shorts since my college orientation, I wonder if I have time to make myself a pair,” he says, “but yeah, to support your girls, I’ll come. We need to get Georgi out of the house, he hasn’t been the same since BB banned him from the Opera House.”

“Oh, I heard, poor Georgi. I can talk to her though, I’m sure we can settle all that, BB just gets heated sometimes.”

Victor laughs a little at that, it’s just like. “If there’s a scrap in the Zones, just call over Ichiyo. She’ll mom it out and get everyone back on track.”

“Oh, enough of that, call me Yuko,” she tells him with a wave of his hand. “We’ve known each other for years now, we can drop the codenames. I never use any of your guys’ anyway.”

“I don’t think any of your trio does. No, Shiragiku does still. Sometimes. I heard him call Georgi _Phantom Ink_ recently… I don’t think he’s ever said my name, to be honest.”

“Yeah, well,” she shrugs. “He’s always been like that, sadly.”

Sometimes, when it becomes obvious that her and Shiragiku share a past that spans beyond the war, Victor gets a little jealous. By the way she speaks about them, sometimes, he wonders if they’ve known each other since they were children. How lucky, he thinks, if that is to be true, how amazing it is for the two of them to still have each other even with everything that’s happened.

It’s that bit that makes him the most envious, rather than the closeness of their relationship.

(Although that gets him too, he’s just trying to be mature about it.)

“Won’t lie to you,” says Victor, “Mila already spilled the beans about your names.”

“Figured. Ken told me when they got home that day. I knew she wouldn’t stay quiet for long.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say she didn’t stay totally quiet. There’s still something I don’t know.”

To that, Yuko laughs, and only says, “Yeah, I figured that too. She does like to get a rise out of you.”

“That she does.” He gives her his best puppy eyes and rocks on the balls of his feet. “So, wouldn’t it be the best kind of gag to give me that info so I could best her for once.”

To Yuko’s credit, she doesn’t even blink at the request. She’s learned from the best, and with the way she hums and taps at her chin, it’s almost like Victor is looking at Mila instead.

“I don’t know,” she says, slyly. “Names are a sacred thing out here in the desert, you know. And we are all but pawns in the grand scheme designed by the Phoenix Witch out here.”

Victor groans loudly.

“You and Mila are way too close,” he grouses, but she only laughs. Again.

“Anyway, I gotta ask Tommy if I can put some of these up in his store. This place has been crazy since the Lobby got demolished. We’ve been sent to collect from him so often, I’m pretty sure I’ve driven out here more times in the past two weeks then in the entirety of living out here. Gotta admit though, it’s a great place to advertise.”

“You really think he’ll put one up?” he snorts. “Tommy’s an asshole, he'll probably say it'll ruin the decor of the place.”

Yuko hits his shoulder with her flyers. “He’s not so bad when you know how to talk to him.”

“I’ve known him for practically forever, though. You can talk to him however, he’s still gonna act like himself. It’s just how it is.”

“Victor,” she chides, softly. “We all handled the path to hell and back differently. Tommy is older than all of us. Who knows what he’s seen.”

Well, when it’s put like that…

She’s not wrong. It’s not like he knows exactly how old Tommy Chow Mein really is. Victor himself is pushing 30, and Tommy must’ve been around his age now or older when they first met. The old man is still kicking, and who knows how he’s able to do it. Maybe she’s right. Maybe he’s seen things and been through things they can’t even imagine.

(Maybe he should do something for him for his birthday. A new dress shirt would be good.)

(Or maybe just a tie.)

(He’ll figure out how generous he’s feeling later.)

“He’ll let me put some up, especially if I cut him in on some kind of promotional fee,” she says like she hadn’t just dropped a truth bomb on him that scattered his mind something fierce. “So don’t forget, come watch my girls, and bring the others! You just never know what kind of surprises you’ll find.”

She leaves him with a wink and a smile, and the impending sense that every woman in his life lives to be as cryptic as possible towards him.

They must get a real kick out of it, he thinks, and heads back to the truck.

 

* * *

  

 

* * *

 

Defend yourself.

It’s a phrase engraved into the minds and souls of every being running in the Zones. For these are dangerous days, where anything and everything can and has happened. Ranging from natural disaster to mass murder. Because if BLI really wanted, everyone surviving out in the desert would be dust.

Defend yourself.

From the Dracs that patrol, the Crows that are shipped out to ensure their victory. From the underhanded criminals. From the hitmen and snipers. From the radioactive waves of the sun. From the looming threat of thirst and starvation.

Defend yourself.

From all of this, and from the creeping thoughts that are always there at the back of the mind. The ones that whisper to those who have lived too long out in the wastelands, surrounded by dust and fallen remnants of what it was like before. Before the struggle to live out each day, and before that infallible feeling that all it comes down to nowadays is to fight.

Fight and survive. And nothing more.

Some lose themselves to such thinking. Lose themselves in the grief and hopelessness and despair of it all. For being surrounded by colorful characters and a never ending summer, sometimes a runner gets caught up in not having much else.

However, luckily, the instinct against this, is common in most.

Because if it’s one thing a human being is gifted in, it is creation. Creating is instinctual in all forms, and in a place like the Zones where it is not only allowed and encouraged but also revered - it is a weapon.

Art is the weapon.

Against life as a symptom.

Defend yourself.

That has become a mantra of sorts for those that live down in the Grove – the community filled with all the art types and all the music spots. Every building is decorated with a mural and there’s someone playing music loudly from either someone’s hovel or from Vaya and Vamos’s music store. Combine them with the diesel rats from Ragtown and you get a Technicolor electric festival of loud music and louder killjoys.

It’s an event not to be missed, and no one does miss it. These things always have a huge turn out.

Victor and the others pull in with other late arrivals, the party is already in full swing at the Dust Bowl and the security detail are all on their look out posts standing guard.

(Just in case some Dracs decide to bombard the place. It’s happened before, it’ll happen again, but there ain’t no way anyone is gonna let them spill as much blood as they did that first time.)

Mila ends up parking the truck a little bit away from everyone else, like she usually does. It’ll be a bit of a run if things do go south, but they’ll be able to get away quicker without the traffic jam. She slides out of the driver’s seat, and Victor and Yuri spill out from the other side. Georgi jumps out from the back of the bed of the truck and readjusts his tunic.

“You are the only runner I know that wears a tunic to a show,” Mila says and strips off her jacket to reveal a green sequined halter top.

“It’s comfortable,” Gerogi argues. “I’m here to network, not look good.”

Yuri can’t hold back his snort, “I can’t believe you just agreed with not looking good, this is why you got banned from the Opera House.”

“No, it’s not. I was banned because Midnight Wasabi is a bully.”

“Whatever,” says Mila and throws her arms around both boys and brings them close despite being shorter than both of them. “Let’s just go have some fun!”

“Remember to meet back at the third loading dock if things go bad, we can run back together,” Victor reminds them.

“Yeah, dad, we know!” Mila teases. “The kids’ll be alright.”

“Georgi is only a year younger than me he can't be one of the kids!”

The four walk in tandem towards the entrance gate, moving past the laughing crowds and brightly dressed youths hanging around the outskirts to socialize without the booming music covering their conversation. There are five killjoys dressed in loose white pants, leather suspenders, and white bandages wrapped around their chests. Each one has their hair cut short and a lot more muscle on display, carrying a tin with a crude slit cut into the top of its lid. They’re acting the part of hired bouncers to collect the entrance fee, and to allow those wearing short shorts in free of charge.

Mila parades towards them with her head held high, making a show of extending her bare legs with each strut and even plays into their applause the closer she gets. The one manning a table with bracelets for those who paid to wear gives her a wink when putting it on her. Again, Mila plays along and blows her a kiss.

She presses her hand to her chest and mock swoons, the rest of her lot whistling and cheering along. When Mila finally goes in, that’s when the others are noticed.

“What about the rest of ya?’ one of them questions the group. “No leg? Bunch of cowards.”

"I had to finish up with the get ups you're all wearing right now," Victor says. "Otherwise, I'd be wearing a pair, too."

"He speaks the truth, and is no longer a coward," says the droog, and then turns directly at Yuri. "What your excuse?"

“Shut up and take my money,” Yuri tells them, and holds the cash out in front of him.

The clan of droogs take their payment and shuffle them in, and they're instantly bombarded with neon lights and the euphoric atmosphere of festivities.

Now, the Dust Bowl had originally been some kind of transportation center. The structure was tall, spherical, and with so many window panes that had been blown away that it now resembles some form of half constructed gladiator arena to be used for cage matches. Instead, it was claimed for the soundwaves; with multiple stages constructed on the second level where trains once rolled in and stage lights hooked up everywhere underneath the left over terraces.

No one not involved can really say how it all runs - what with the control panels hooked up to all these generators, and the perseverance of them alone is astonishing - but it's universally acknowledged that the sheer motivation behind it was to make art come alive.

And here, it does.

“I love these things!” Mila shouts, and the excitement of it all vibrates through and makes her shiny. “I wanna go into the pit! Victor! Come with me, you're my wingman!”

She doesn't even wait for his response, she takes his hand and runs straight into the throes of bodies moving to the beat with him straggling behind.

“I'm gonna go find Beka,” Yuri says to Georgi. “Good luck with your networking, I guess.”

Yuri doesn't exactly know what Georgi's networking entails, and frankly he's not willing to see a repeat of the infamous Opera House banishment. That's an embarrassment that should be viewed once and only once.

(Not that he was even there when it happened. The only one that had seen it was Mila, but the second hand embarrassment from the tale was enough to leave an impression.)

It doesn't bother Georgi at this point; he knows that he's just a bit off from the rest of them. He'd lived aimlessly in his first life, didn't get off on a sure foot in his second, and if he's honest, if it hadn't been for Victor, he probably would have ended up shriveled and burnt on the side of Guano with the other waveheads.

But enough of that, it's a long story, and he has people to find.

Navigating scenes like this are his specialty. He'll be the first to admit that. He knows where all the good hiding places are. He had been a loner kid growing up, and even now he only comes out to shows as loud as these when it's a "family thing", as Mila likes to put it. He doesn't mind too much, because really, they're great places to network.

He searches for the quietest corners, the ones where lurkers and talkers frequent because those are the ones that run their own broadcasts in hopes of getting an Opera House ticket. If he can start off on one of the smaller channels and work up again, gather a cult following, and then his stardom will be so grand that Midnight Wasabi would have no choice but to let him back to perform.

Solid plan.

It works for the most part, he ends up in the "food court" where there are stretches of ledges where killjoys of all kinds are plated and eating out of tin cans and paper bowls. There's a line of food carts and a few stalls, one of them with barbecue and he's only a little put off by the smell. Not that he'll tempt his luck with trying it out, not after last time.

That aside, it's here that he spots them, one of the regulars that hosts their own broadcast by piggy backing off Dr Death Defying's signal when he signs off and has gained a bit of a following. If he can get into their good graces...

"Party!" he calls out. "Party Poison!'

Party Poison is a more notorious killjoy, infamous for BLI raids and was almost apprehended by the Exterminator himself. They also host a broadcast that centers around a continuous saga involving airship pirates and old world history. Every now and again they'll front a Q and A for the latest chapter at the Opera House, and it's a running joke that maybe their tale will never end because the next part is always hidden somewhere away in the confines of  the maze that is their mind.

(Yuri says it's because they've bleached and dyed their hair so much to keep it that bright of a red, it killed off the brain cells needed to know which way the story is going. Mila takes offense to this, since she's been known to brighten her own red hair every now and again.)

"Hey!" they greet loudly the closer Georgi gets to them. "Whatcha doin' here? You're not the partying type."

They get up from the ledge they've hunkered down on, a small bowl with a couple of tacos filled with a questionable looking substance and a greenish sauce covering them in their hand, and offers one to Georgi.

"Want one?"

"What is it?"

"Dunno. It smells kinda bad, but it tastes pretty good."

"I think I'll pass."

"Suit yourself," they say and stuff their mouth full once more. "So, what's up?"

"I've been thinking," Gerogi begins, doing his best to not look put off by the way they eat their food, "about your broadcast, that is."

"What about it?"

"It's great!"

"Thanks! Most heard small-bit from what I hear."

"I don't doubt it. But I've been thinking, and yeah, it is great, but lately it's been ending on down notes."

"Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing right now. I was hoping I'd have more to work with than just killing off Tiberius to get out of the corner I wrote myself into, but oh well. Maybe a wizard will come along and help out. A necromancer. That actually wouldn't be too bad of an idea. Hey, can I base my witch off of you?"

"I thought it was a wizard."

"My mind thinks fast."

"Sure, whatever, that's fine. Anyway, I'm just thinking you might wanna consider ending your broadcasts with something pensive in the very least, some parting words in the form of light poetry, something to leave listeners thinking optimistically instead of dwelling on the negatives. We got enough of that in real life already."

"True that. You hear about the cavalry taking off from Old Vegas? The renegade band of Queens, what were their names... the Screaming Mimis, or something like that."

"No, what happened?"

"Took shelter in an abandoned pig bomb out on the outskirts of the big ticket border. Dust storm came by and no where to dig a hole so they plopped in and set it off. They felt the aftershocks all the way to the mythosphere. It was all Costa Rica."

"Jesus Christ."

"Can't hear you out here, even if he was still around to want to."

Party shoves the last of the food in their mouth and chomps down while crumpling the bowl in their hand like nothing. They toss it over their shoulder and into the nearby pile of garbage that'll be collected in a couple of days. It seems a little uncaring, but at least this way it keeps it all in one place instead of all over the Dome.

"Anyway, I know what you're doing," they say once they swallow everything down. "And it's smart. If you can get people to hear your song, BB might let your back in the OH. I'll help you out, but I'm not the only one working the channel. You're gonna have to get Novacaine's permission to show up too, and you know how to get him on your side."

Supa Novacaine is a hardball when it comes to producing written works. He's a a full six feet of intellectual spite and has more frenemies than actual friends, but hot damn, does he have  a way with making a person stir up some deep emotions with the way he weaves his words. The only way to get him to actually like you is besting him at word games. It rarely happens, and the odds are even worse if he's playing on a team with his sister.

"Where's he at?"

"Upstairs," says Party and points up towards the crowded staircase. "The Vamps set up a spot for dark lurks, whatever the hell that means. They got a game of blocks going on the last I saw them."

"Who's he playing with?"

"Dolorosa."

"Fuck... Okay, I'm in."

"Good luck, brotha," Party laughs. "C'mon, I'll get ya in."

Party Poison claps his hand onto Georgi's shoulder, and leads him towards the broken down escalator-cum-staircase into a secluded area.

"Nice tunic, by the way."

Georgi gives himself a little fist pump.

Meanwhile, away from the political workings of the Zones underground poet's society, Yuri walks through the throng of moving bodies to get closer to the stages. Otabek is on one of them already, he knows his set is soon and he's probably still sorting through his mixes.

He wears his hood up, the leopard print trim blending into the lightness of his hair in the dim setting and making him look more predatory than he really is. He pushes back when people push into him and never breaks his stride. It makes other move out of his way once they get his vibe - he's not here to be thrown around with the rest of them. He's a man on a mission.

He's a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.

That... He could probably make a desert name out of that. Well, whatever, it's not like he really needs one.

Desert names, were all fun and cool when he was 11 and his grandfather had long since passed away, and the only chance for survival was hanging on to whatever killjoy thought he'd make a cute mascot at the time, but after just being referred to as Yuri by Victor for so long, it's kind of lost it's appeal. In a sense, he gets why it's a thing: living out in the Zones and away from the presence of a civilization that literally controls every facet of your being makes a person want to rebel in all shapes and forms, and you end up doing stupid shit like calling yourself Tiger Napalm.

Tiger Napalm.

That's actually kinda cool.

He shakes his head. Focus. He's here to hang out with Beka. It feels like forever since they've seen each other.

Yuri passes by the set up Dr Death Defying has with his equipment  pointed towards the live music and headbanging almost inappropriately along with the beat. News-A-GoGo is by his side, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else but is flipping through a copy of Shiny and making the best of it. It makes him smirk. News has always been the more relatable of he two.

Yuri can't say that he lives for these things like Mila does, and he doesn't see them as strategic battles like Georgi is apparently treating it, but it's nice, he thinks. It's almost like something akin to a nightlife. Something he might have gotten to experience himself if he'd been allowed to live a normal teenage life.

(He wonders what that would have been like sometimes. To go to school, make friends his age, and go to concerts that weren't just a mishmash of different sounds that somehow work and blend together.)

(Most of the time he think it'd be boring, he kind of remembers going to school and all that, as vague as a memory as it is. Still though, it's not like he'll really know, after all.)

Well, in any case, it's more than just a nice change of pace to not be cooped up in the tiny hovel that is their home listening to Georgi's ongoing zoology saga depicting animals being betrayed by love, Victor's pining, and Mila's teasing. He loves them, he'll never admit that, but he does. And half the time he wants to drop kick all of them. How he ended up in the Zones most emotional filled gang, he has no idea, and he certainly has no idea how the universe expected him to fit in with all of them -

"Oi! Yuri!"

His fight or flight response kicks in automatically and his head swivels around to look for that aggravating voice he's oh-so familiar with now.

"Up here!"

His head goes up and, yup. There he is.

Kenjiro - God, how annoying it is that he thinks of him by his actual name rather his code name now, it's terrible, it's like they're friends - is nearly hanging from the upper floor's railing and waving his hands out maniacally. There's a gaggle of masked joys hanging around him, so Yuri does what he does naturally.

He makes a face at him and walks away.

Kenjiro doesn't appear to be having any of that nonsense, though. Without Yuri noticing, he climbs over the railing and scales down the beams crossing one another until he feels comfortable enough to just jump out  and land right in front of him, making Yuri jump backwards from shock.

"What the actual fuck are you?!" Yuri ends up shouting, but Kenjiro only laughs.

He grabs at Yuri's hand and starts to drag him through the crowd without so much as a word and since he's still recovering from that surprise, lets himself be dragged along. It isn't until he's being led up a staircase that he puts up some semblance of a fight.

"Where are you dragging me?" he borderline demands. "I'm just here to hang out with-"

"Deathstare, yeah, I know," Kenjiro cuts him off. "But you can get to his booth better from the upper levels, and I want you to meet some people."

"What people?"

"My friends!"

"How do you have friends?"

"Some people like to socialize with the outside world."

Yuri doesn't really have any interest in meeting new people right now, or ever, if he's perfectly honest. He's content with the one friend he has now and doesn't understand why he should make any others. But Kenjiro is right, it probably would be easier to get to Otabek's booth from above. He's brought on to a platform where he gets the advantage of seeing him just on the other side of the Bowl. He's dressed only in a white shirt and jeans - his trademark leather jacket hung on a bar above where he's setting up his station, and Yuri shouts his name as loud as he can.

It carries over the music, and he's able to grab his attention.

They have this sort of weird thing where they're able to communicate without saying anything. Georgi makes it sound more romantic than what it is - some kind of old world semblance of platonic soulmates finding each other after the end of the world.

Yuri just thinks it's because they both pretty much have the same opinions when it comes to people. And make fun of them.

In any case, Otabek's face asks what he's up to.

Yuri points at Kenjiro still tugging at him.

Otabek only gives him a thumbs up.

Yuri flips him off.

By the time that's over and done with, Kenjiro has let go of his hand and is actually pushing him front and center into a group of unknown masked killjoys.

"This is the guy I tell y'all about," he tells them all. "The really cool one."

"He doesn't look that cool," says one with silver dusted on their cheeks and a jade colored mask.

"Look a lot cooler than you," Yuri replies without missing a beat.

"That doesn't take much, to be honest," says the one to his left with black X marks over their eyes, showing off tanned legs in a pair of blue and black short shorts and a white fishnet shirt. "They call me the Axel Kid."

A fist is thrusted out at him, hanging in mid air and Yuri just stares at it until he finally figures to just bump it with his own.

"Why do they call you that?"

"Why do they call us anything?"

Fair point.

"Kobra Kid," the next introduces, wearing a bright yellow and black tank under a red vinyl jacket.

"You actually sound familiar," says Yuri.

"I’m Party Poison’s brother, their a word weaver. We also have a gang."

"You and everyone else."

"We're on the Director's short list and escaped the Exterminator twice."

"Okay, that's cool."

The last one, and the one to still be looking just a small side on the hostile one, introduces themselves as the Galaxy Kid.

"Star child, abandoned on earth, surviving on static."

"And also the opposite of the cool meter. You really say that out loud to people?"

"What's your name, then?" they demand. "Like it's any better."

Yuri blinks.

"Tiger Napalm," he says.

"Oh, shit, that is better," says the Axel Kid. "He already sounds cooler than you do."

"It's the gimmick," Kobra agrees.

"Whatever, I still don't even know who you are, or why I should care."

Yuri’s at the age, whether he realizes it or not, where he both craves and loathes validation. Loathes, because the end of the world happened, and everyone is a nobody in a sense so what is even the point? Craves, because the end of the world happened, and he’s still surviving, and dammit it all people will know his name.

“You should care if the threads you’re wearing say anything about it,” he tells the Galaxy Kid. “Ain’t no bin rat providing you with the colors, those are custom, and the chance is good that they came from me.”

“Your Victor’s apprentice,” the Axel Kid states more than asks. “Holy shit.”

“Not to sound dramatic,” says the Kobra Kid, “but we would literally be fuckin’ lost without him.”

“That’s a little exaggerated,” says Yuri, and he’s not really wrong.

“Maybe,” Kobra says. “But when you got nothing and someone can provide from it, you become a beacon of something, y’know? Like Mad Gear, revving the tunes and letting us dance. Dr D, providing the connection to the Before. Tommy, the supplier. Sunflower, the protector. Victor, the creator. News-A-GoGo, the informant. We all play a part, some more appreciated than others. Their names are documented in the Library’s archives and become a part of our own history that lives on in the echoes of the static.”

The group shares a moment of silence.

“You really are Poison’s brother,” says Axel. “That was poetic as fuck.”

“Don’t tell ‘em, I don’t wanna get caught up in that.”

Axel only waves him off and gives his attention back to Yuri. “So, are you gonna be the next creator when Victor becomes static?”

Yuri’s eye twitches. It’s not like there’s anything malicious behind these words, they’re absolutely valid. They don’t live in a community that guarantees long lives and retirement, any one of them can go at any time, but still… When he thinks about Victor being ghosted… When he thinks about any of them being turned to dust….

“He’s gonna join the flower chain,” says Kenjiro. “I can feel it.”

“Will you fuck off with that shit?” Yuri near damn yells. “I’m sick of it, I’m not doing it, I don’t give a fuck what Beka said to you, I don’t even know _what_ he said to you-”

“I think Deathstare just thinks you need to get out more,” Kenjiro argues. “Unless you really are planning on being the next Victor?”

Kenjiro’s question does not get answered because the Axel Kid is suddenly yelling, “Shut the fuck up! You know DJ Deathstare?”

Yuri gives him a passive stare. “Yeah? I met him like three years ago when he came asking for his leather jacket. We’ve been friends since then.”

“I am the biggest Deathstare fan, his mixes are unparalleled, he is the only non-band Joy worth listening to. Ugh, he is the only reason I listen to DJ Hot Chimp as much as I do!”

“Wow, and y’all call me cringey,” says Galaxy.

“Shut up!”

“You wouldn’t be able to introduce us, would you?” Kobra asks. “He always seems so… isolated that it’s kind of intimidating to get near him. But I’d like to find a way for my sibling to have him on their show. He’s been talking about how cool it would be to have him make background noise for his saga.”

It's not like he needs to impress them, but that ugly mixed emotion of needing and hating validation is rearing its ugly head and he feels compelled to show off. At least he can justify it with maybe landing Otabek another gig.  And it's not like Otabek would care if he brings a small group along. He's pretty sure. Probably. He'll ditch them if he does.

“Of course, I can,” he tells them. “I’m me.”

So, with that, Yuri leads them onto the higher platform - the whole lot of them playing a balancing act on the beams they need to climb on to even get there above the moving throng of bodies still trapped in their hypnotic rhythm.  The very same throng that Mila absolutely feels at home in, and Victor can't lie, he does as well.

It takes him back to his youth. Those days before the end when was night and the only worries he had were whether or not the high humidity of whatever club he crawled into next was going to damage his hair. If he closes his eyes and moves along with the music, it's just like then. That spirit has never changed, Destroya be praised.

Mila spins around in front of him, hands high above her head and her head is thrown back, eyes closed and a large smile on her face. Victor moves along with her, his hips moving in sync with hers right up until he circles his arms around his waist and lifts her off her feet. Mila shrieks but it’s lost in the sound and she’s tossed straight up into the air and held still for just two seconds before he drops her back down to her feet.

“You shoulda spun me!” she complains.

“You’re heavy!” he complains right back with a laugh.

“And you’re getting old!” she teases right back, laughing loud at his pout. “C’mon, old man! Keep up.”

She grabs his hand and spins him around on his own, taking the lead. It’s Victor’s turn to throw his head back and laugh. He really does love these things.

The electronica bleeds away and the a harsh gust of cold wind breezes through the crows much to the relief of everyone sweating  when the last beat stops. There are those leaving and the crowd moves in all kinds of directions. He ends up grabbing Mila’s hand dragging her up closer to the stages. There’s practice beats on drums happening, so the actual concert part of the night must be happening soon and he wants a good spot to jump around in.

(He can’t say he’s overly fond of the harsh guitar sounds from the Grove’s rock bands, but it’s not like he’s going to complain about the only concerts they have out here anyway.)

(Beggard can’t be choosers.)

(And killjoys and runners have only had the one choice)

“I think Otabek should be starting his set but I don’t see Yuri anywhere,” he says.

“He’s probably with him already.”

Victor runs his hands through the fringe of his hair and grimaces at the sweat.

“I’m gonna need to break out the bathtub, we’re all gonna need a thorough bath.”

“Should’ve worn less clothes!”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to-”

“Holy shit!” Mila suddenly shouts. “Victor! Look at who’s over there!”

She grabs his arm, forces him to turn around in the direction he’s staring and his heart stops.

Some feet away from them, leaning against the railing is Sara, dressed in a purple jumpsuit that sparkles under the bright lights and has been cut very high above her thigh and white fishnets hugging her legs, and sitting onto of the railing, legs crossed and looking more beautiful ever is Shiragiku.

“Let’s go!” Mila cries out and drags him through the leftover crowd, plowing right through them all at a speed he ends up tripping over.

He can’t drag his eyes away from the other man, he’s too focused on the smile he’s giving Sara, laughing at whatever it she’s telling him. He’s dressed as skimply as she is - shirtless, bare legged, and black fishnets, and he can see the straps of a holster underneath his vest, just hinting at the heat he’s packing and the danger he’s capable of and dammit all if that doesn’t do _things_ to Victor.

“You two!” Mila is shouting and gaining their attention. “Hey! It’s been forever!”

Both of them notice them right away, Sara smiling radiantly at the two of them and Shiragiku looking like a deer in headlights.

Oh, god, did they intrude on a moment? Victor’s mind is racing and then promptly short circuits when the other man jumps down from the railing and he’s able to see him in all his glory.

All his glory meaning, that unlike Sara whose fishnets are only seen on her legs, the fishnets Shiragiku is wearing peek out from the top of his shorts (that are so short, oh so short, and very golden, where did these come from because Victor would have remembered making _gold sequin booty shorts_ and yet…) and settling right at the top of his hips. His very well-defined, toned and sun kissed hips.

(He might be staring.)

(He’s definitely staring.)

“Are you here for Mad Gear too?” Sara asks. “We’re just waiting for the show to start.”

“We were dancing out there,” Mila answers. “Workin’ up a sweat. Y’all over here just standing around looking pretty?”

“Well, we were helping Yuko out with her girls backstage before coming out here,” Sara tells her. “I haven’t had a chance to dance yet.”

“Well I won’t stand for that.” She doesn’t hesitate, she grabs Sara’s hand and leads her back into the crowd. “Otabek should be starting soon and then it’s Mad Gear, you can dance with me the whole night, if you want!”

“Sounds like a plan!”

The two girls run off, leaving both Victor and Shiragiku alone to follow after them.

“She stole your date,” Victor jokes.

“Oh, no!” he’s quick to deny, waving his hands and splutters, “We’re not - I just - Michele asked me to look after her. Because he’s running a cart and - Well, y’know how Sara gets restless, and I -We’re only friends!”

“I’m just kidding,” Victor laughs, and then again at the sight of the other man visibly deflating. “Nice look, by the way.”

The shade of red that spreads from his cheeks and all the way down to his chest is going to be a vision that stays with Victor for the rest of his days. He’s never known anyone to react so quickly and so viciously to a compliment.

“Thank you,” says Shiragiku. “You look nice.”

He’s also glad that he can keep his own blush to bridge of his nose, when he really tries.

“Well, the girls are on their own,” he says to change the subject, “ wanna dance with me?”

He holds his arm out, like he’s some sort of old World gentleman leading his sweetheart out for the dance floor, hoping he isn’t going to look ridiculous when the inevitable rejection comes crashing down on him because he knows that as good looking as he is, Shiragiku right now is stunning and can have anyone he wants here. He isn’t prepared, and he isn’t able to contain the blush, when his arm is taken, and the other killjoy steps up next to him and smiles.

“Sure,” he says. Simple as that, as if he has no idea just how hard he’s making Victor’s heart beat right now.

“Get over here!” comes a shout not to far from them, and it turns out to be Mila, waving her arms frantically just as the music comes back on. “You’re gonna lose a good spot!”

Victor laughs and looks down at his dance partner. “Shall we?”

It’s so endearing to see Shiragiku bite down on his lip and nod. “Lead away.”

And he does. They come to stand behind Mila and Sara who are laughing away at whatever it is that they’re going on about, and Victor is doing his best to not think too hard on how he has the most beautiful desert dweller hanging on his arm right now lest he ruin the moment before the show even starts.

DJ Deathstare, who Victor knows by his personal name, lights up his booth and catches the crowd’s attention. He raises his arms and the crowd cheers. He hollers along with them, as do the other three in the group. He’s heard some of the samples from the nightly transmission calls he’s been making to Yuri for the past week and knows that they’re all in for a good show.

“Oh, my god, is that Yuri?”

He doesn’t know which one of them shouts, but he’s staring up at the booth again, and sure enough Yuri is there surrounded by an entourage of killjoys he has never seen before. His jacket is falling off from his shoulders, his hair is wild, and he’s wearing Otabek’s sunglasses while standing up in front of the booth with a mic in hand.

“To all the killjoys out there,” he shouts into the mic, “can you dig it?!”

The crowd cheers again.

From behind him, Kenjiro appears and takes the mic away, taking his turn to yell, “Can you dig it?!”

It grows louder.

There are four more behind them, none of them have seen them before but they’re are a wild bunch if the six of them together are able to crescendo together another round of, “CAN. YOU. DIG. IT?!”

The spirit of revolution roars strong from the mass of people below them. Once the beat begins, they’re all lost to it.

The end of the world happened, after all.

Why not dance?

Victor isn’t paying attention to the ones above them, he doesn’t see Yuri dancing next to Otabek hard at work or how he finally looks like a teenager having fun, and he doesn’t notice Mila and Sara entwining themselves with one another as the move along with each other, his attention is centered with only himself and his dance partner.

Shiragiku moves wonderfully, his motions are fluid and he knows how to sync up with Victor’s style, or lack thereof. His face is never without a smile and he’s still beautiful even with sweat beading along his hairline and running down the sides of his face, maybe even more so.

Victor latches on to his waist, keeps them close together and spins them around in their own little circle. There’s a faint blush of exertion dusting the others cheeks, giving him a bit of color to match the gold lining his top eyelashes.

(He wants to press a kiss to the little flick at the end of it.)

(He wants to do so much.)

It all ends too soon in his opinion.

Otabek’s set lasts longer than it should have what with the two extra encores he was apparently granted, but even then it seems like he did not spend enough time dancing. He’s not ready for the sudden appearance of Mad Gear, in all his leather clad glory, to take center stage with his band. But the atmosphere changes, and the hype only grows, he might not be ready for them, but everyone else is. He feels Shiragiku cling on to his arm and squeeze hard enough to force him to look over at him.

“It’s Mad Gear!” he shouts, a large smile on his face, and it is infectious.

“Don’t fall behind when the crowd starts to push,” he warns, even though he’s still smiling. “That happens a lot!”

“Oh, trust me, I know!”

Victor isn’t able to see the stage, not all of it, but he does see the raised platform and Yuko’s three girls waving excitedly at the crowd in front of them.

“Look, it’s the girls!” he shouts and points and they all start to call at them.

They don’t hear them, however, and no one can blame them. It’s hard to hear anything with how loud everyone is being. It only settles down when Mad Gear approaches his mic, taps on it to check and raises his hands up to quiet them all down. When it’s as quiet as it’s gonna get, he leans in close.

"Radiation on the left and Dracs on the right," he murmurs right into the mic, making everything he says sounds more intimate than it really is. "You might as well party as if you won’t make it through the night. So come on, fallout girls, bunker boys, and junkrat kids, let’s pretend for the moment like we have a choice.”

The keyboard is the first to start playing, and soon the drums follow, and soon the crowd starts to jump along with the guitars coming to life.

There’s pushing and shoving, everyone is trying to get as close to the stage as possible and it becomes too clustered to do anything more than hop along and throw their arms into the air to show just how stoked they all are to be out here tonight.

Someone climbs up onto the stage and instantly dives into the crowd, making the girls cry out and stumble back into them, Victor almost ends up knocking over Shiragiku, but the other man is able to steady him and keep him upright.

“You have to be careful,” he says right into his ear. “No, really, you can get trampled!”

“You’re just gonna have to rescue me, I guess!”

He laughs, it’s only a joke, but he’s smacked playfully for the lip all the same.

And the night goes on. One song ends, the other beings, harder and faster than before. Yuko’s girls are shrieking over one in particular and he doesn’t know what they’re saying, but they run off the platform they had been dancing on and jump along with the audience, getting them more riled up and pointing in general directions, demanding that mosh pits be made there.

It’s just like them…

One ends, and one begins, right up until Victor hears it. The beginning chords to a song that every dweller and joy knows by now. The Ode to Destroya herself, and the one Mad Gear tells everyone is special.

"[ Where are you Destroya? ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6A3d1d2x9Q)" Mad Gear asks the skies and the crowd goes wild. "Where are you Destroya?... Where are you Destrooyaa?... Where are you?! Destroyaaa?!"

Suddenly, lightning streaks through the sky, cuts through the illumination of the stage lights and hits one of the stages. Sparks fly through the air and there’s screaming as the music is cut to sharp halt. For a moment there is quiet in the aftermath, and before anyone can even comment on what has just happened, there is a roar descending upon them from the sky, another streak of light coming from above, and then a sudden downpour.

Rain.

Only, there was no reports of rain.

They don’t know if it’s safe.

They don’t know if it’s water or acid.

They're scrambling, and the whole party turns into a madhouse. Victor holds on to Shiragiku’s hand, but he’s preoccupied with looking for Mila who is still no longer in his vision. There’s a tug though, and he’s brought back to the other man’s attention.

“It’s Mila,” he tells him. “She’ll be fine, let’s go!”

They both scurry as fast as they can to find shelter. So many have already taken over the stages and their awnings, there are those scrambling to just get _under_ the stage, and as for the two of them, they race through the crowd as quickly as they can, scampering at each other’s heels and hands never leaving each other’s grasp. They make it to the sidelines, scuttling and ducking underneath a ledge made up of nothing but chain link, wooden boards, and aluminum sheets. It’s too low to the ground for them to stand under, they end up sitting on the floor, their legs tucked in close and pressed tight against one another.

This isn’t the time for Victor to think about the lack of space between them, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t even completely acknowledge that he’s instinctively wrapped his arms around the other waist, pressing his bare forearm against bare skin and the grip he has on his hips. He can feel the fishnet dig into his palm, but he’s more focused on looking out for whoever needs to run out and test the water.

It’s a  tech head that runs out onto the main stage, dressed in oilcloth from head to toe, and pulls out a kit from the confines of his jacket, opens it up clumsily and all of it's contents spill out. He moves to grab at something - some kind of stick that Victor's never seen before - and swirls it around in a glass filled with the water falling from the sky. Despite the patter of the rain, everyone watches with bated breath, right up until the figure on the stage pulls the stick out and studies it intently. He visibly relaxes, and smiles large enough for them to see from their hiding spot. He throws off his protective jacket, raises his arms up, turns his face up, and laughs.

“Praise the Phoenix Witch!” he yells. “Praise Destroya! Praise them!”

It's clean.

It's safe.

They have water.

Suddenly there's noise.

Everyone is cheering. There’s laughter, and killjoys running back into the fray, arms open and heads tilted back to catch the spray. The music starts up again, right from where it left off, and the party goes on.

Victor doesn’t hold back the laugh that spills out from his lips, and neither does Shiragiku. They both fall over each other, the adrenaline from the excitement wearing out of their bodies, leaving them to feel nothing but relief at the lack of danger.

Maybe it’s that, the euphoria of them not being caught up in dangerous weather, of being able to enjoy a show together for this long without Drac interaction, of being able to pretend that there is no struggle to survive, but they are simply just two men laughing and Victor just happens to be in love. Maybe it’s that, that causes him to stare a little too longingly when Shiragiku pushes his hair back away from his face, makes him think that Mila was right, he is handsome with his hair pushed back, and makes him lose himself when he leans just that little bit more forward and catch his lips in a kiss.

It last for no more than two seconds, a simple little thing that burns itself into Victor’s lips and leaves him cold when the other man pulls away so abruptly. Shiragiku’s eyes are wide and he’s touching his lips, absolute shock plastered on his face and Victor’s stomach sinks.

His first thought is that he’s made a terrible mistake, he should have known better than to allow himself to give himself over to his emotions and not think about his actions. What’s done is done though, he can’t take it back, and now he has to deal with the fallout when it comes.

And it seems to be coming soon, if the look he’s being given is any indication to the oncoming rejection.

Shiragiku lowers his hand. He’s looking directly at Victor, brow furrowed slightly, bottom lip caught between his teeth with the question that needs to be asked.

“Why?’ he asks, simply, and yet it is the most foreboding question he’s heard in his lifetime.

And what else can he say in the face of this? When he’s already sobered the moment up by acting out on instinct and want? Why deny him the truth?

“I like you,” he says. There’s no smile, no hint of laughter, just a flat confession. “I did it, because I  like you.”

In the moments that follow after there is nothing said between them, and even though the crowd in front of them has roared back to life, their noise is muffled. Nothing can penetrate this space where it’s just them. The small bubble where all Victor can hear is the sound of his own heart beat in his ears and cannot look away from the growing sadness in the eyes of the man in front of him.

(He knows that look.)

(He’s seen it in himself.)

(This won’t be good.)

There’s a small flicker of hope that ignites in his chest when Shiragiku places a hand against his cheek. He dares to hope, because if he can’t hope, then what else can he do out here? His breath hitches, when a chaste peck of a kiss is given to him, right at the top of his cheekbone, and he reaches out, but Shiragiku catches his hands, hold them, brings them back down to his lip.

He doesn’t make eye contact with Victor, not for what seem like an age too long, and when he does, his eyes are unreadable, but they are firm in whatever decision it seems he has made.

“Yuri,” he says, and it’s said so softly, that Victor doesn’t almost catch it.

But he does, and his first instinct is to look around, because what about Yuri?

“No,” Shirgaiku says, calling his attention back. “My name…”

Oh.

“What?” Victor asks, breathless.

“My name,” he repeats, “is Yuri.”

Several things happen in this moment: There’s another clap of thunder. Mad Gear’s set ends. The crowd is wild. Shiragiku slips out of his grasp and gets up to leave. Victor is left reeling with the information he is just given. Surprised to have heard it so casually, and more shocked at the implications of what just happened.

He’s quick to get on his feet.

“Wait,” he calls out, but the other man is already slipping away into the throng of bodies that are milling about and pumped up for the next act despite being soaked to the bone.

Victor tries to keep up, but Shira- _Yuri_ is a flower, and like all of them, he’s learned to slip away and escape. Like petals caught in a hard wind, he’s gone before Victor can even reach out to catch him. He’s left to stand in the middle of the crowd, still isolated, and still not really hearing anything.

It wasn’t a rejection, he doesn’t feel like it was.

But it felt too much like a goodbye.

And honestly, once he allows it to crash over him in the midst of a summer revelry, that is probably worse.

 

* * *

 

_Send you my love on a wire_   
_Lift you up, every time, everyone, ooh, pulls away, ooh_   
_It's a mechanical bull, the number one_   
_You'll take a ride from anyone_   
_Everyone wants a ride, pulls away, ooh, from you...._

 

* * *

 

The air is dry. It makes the dust cling to Georgi's tongue up on the lookout post and keeps him smacking his lips together to get some sort of relief. It’s something that Mila notices and decides to do something nice for him.

"Hey!"

She calls out to him and he turns to see her skipping towards him with a tin cup in her hand. She climbs up to stand next to him and hands it over  wordlessly. He takes it, grateful for the thought and praise the Phoenix Witch, water has never tasted so good.

"Thanks," he says, and hands it back to her when it's drained entirely. "I really needed that."

"Figured you would," she says, and hops right up on the ledge next to him. "It's dry out  today."

"Better than all that humidity we had right after the rainfall."

"Ugh, I know. I actually will not lie, I do like the heat out here, but that was just asking too much of me."

"Well, with humidity, it's not the heat, but the moisture content - "

"Okay, Gerogi, calm down, you don't need to turn this into a lesson."

"I just know some things is all..."

The talk dies down between them, though it's not unpleasant or awkward. It rarely is between them, any of them really, it's one of the reasons why they are able to live together for as long and as peaceful as they have. It can even be considered enjoyable, what with the way chaos can come fluttering into their lives at a given moment, the quiet is something to be appreciated.

Mila starts to kicks her feet back and forth, head thrown back and eyes closed against the sun while Georgi picks up the binoculars and goes back to search around. In the distance, they can both hear Victor and Yuri chattering while looking over the new equipment that was finally delivered by some Ragtown killjoys.

Mila is about to make a comment about that, when Gerogi tenses up next to her.

"What's going on?" she asks, her tone urgent and hopping off from the ledge.

"There's a car speeding up in our direction," he tells her. He leans over the ledge, more towards the direction he's looking in as though that's going to make what he's seeing any clearer. "It doesn't look like it's comin- No. No, wait, yeah, it's coming up on our road. It's headed for us."

"Is it one we know? Georgi?"

"It's yellow...ish. Looks like an old Cadillac. I don't think it's one I've ever seen before."

"Maybe it's a new customer?"

"We usually hear something from the Springs if that was the case. HQ is the one that gives out our coordinates. All we got today was a transmission for the chain run, and that isn't their car."

"We need to tell them. Just in case it's something we need to take care of. "

She doesn't wait for his response, she jumps right down from the platform and runs. She runs as fast as she can and hollers out at the other two working. Georgi follows right after her. There's no mistaking that it's heading for them now and that it's an unknown vehicle. There isn't any other cars tailing them, so if it something unfriendly, it'll be something the can take on.

"You don’t think it could be a customer?" Victor asks. "This wouldn't be the first time one just springs up on us."

"If it is, then there’s nothing to worry about," says Mila. "But if it isn’t?"

"It's a pale yellow Cadillac,” Georgi tells him. “I can't tell the year, but I don't remember ever seeing it here before. Could be someone new that heard where we are from word of mouth, but just in case, maybe we should be standing in V-Formation?"

"Doesn't hurt," Victor agrees. "Yuri!"

"Already on it," says Yuri, with his Individual out, loaded, and cocked.

The V-Formation, as obvious as it may be, is a strategic placement for whenever strangers and other unknowns approach them. As Victor is the quick-draw, he stands up front, both Mila and Georgi behind him; Mila to his right, Georgi to his left. It's Yuri's job to climb up on to the roof, hopping from the back water tank and to take cover behind a ledge built just for the purpose to play the sniper. As the youngest, it's always been his job to stay out of the direct line of danger (his age now aside from when the formation first came to be), and as the one with the best eyesight, it seems only to be common sense for him to act the role.

They lay in waiting; Yuri hollering down to them when he's in position, and the rest of them form up in front of the shack, just within running position of either getting inside, or behind any of the posts. The yellow Cadillac soon becomes within seeing distance and they can all see that the speed starts to slow down the closer it approaches. It's quiet in the sense that there is no music playing, but the windows are rolled down, and all of them can see three young girls inside through both the windshield.

Georgi and Mila look over at each other, just a quick glance before they divert their attentions back. All three girls swing their car doors open at once, and step out in unison. The one driving - A tall dark brunette with long flowing hair and a pink stargazer lily tucked behind her ear, plain green mask hanging around her neck - calls out to them.

"Victor! Long time no see."

It sets the mood, and suddenly all forms of tension are gone. However, in their wake, is left confusion and surprise. The V-Formation breaks, as Victor steps out of his position and approaches the three girls with Mila and Georgi walking close behind. Mila nudges Georgi's arms as they walk, her eyes asking a non-verbal question that Georgi only shrugs at.

He knows about as much as any of them.

"What... are you three doing here?" Victor asks, some uncertainty lacing his voice. "Not to sound rude, but I wasn't really expecting customers today."

"Not customers," says the one that had occupied the passenger seat - an average height strawberry blonde with a a white stargazer lily attached to her black headband. "Didn't you get a transmission from the Springs about the chain run being today?"

"We did, but it's usually the Imperial trio that makes our stop. Not to say I don't love the Stargazers, but you guys were always on the CD route."

"We were," says Pink. "And we really don't know the whole story behind the change, but Sunflower said that we'll be taking over this route while she configures whoever is left."

"Left?"

"You didn't hear?" White asks him. "We're taking back the Sierras. They got some convoys ready to roll out and some of the chain is expanding with them. They might stay out there for good, or they might come back and just make a run, no one's really sure at this point."

"Yeah," says Pink. "All we know is that it's messed up some of our routes. It's a real chess game."

"Yeah, too bad Ichiyo was left behind on her own. Otherwise this route would've been left alone, but Sunflower doesn't expect her to do all the work."

"Ichiyo is still here?" says Mila, taking over the conversation since now it seems like Victor is falling awfully quiet. "Why wouldn't they send the whole trio?"

"Well, that's because she has kids," says the last of their group, a very tiny and short stature young girl with a bright yellow bob and a matching stargazer pinned to her black jacket. "She wasn't going to volunteer with the other two when she has them to look after."

"It was voluntary," Victor says, but not in the way that makes it sound like it was meant to be heard. He says it in a way that was for him alone, as though he needs the information to process even with the soft little sigh of his words.

It makes Mila's brows furrow and cast a worried glance to Georgi, who isn't even paying her attention.

"Well, yeah," says Yellow. "It's kind of a dangerous trek right now, getting that close to Battery since you need to take Guano to get there, not to mention the clean up..."

"Ugh, yeah, it's prolly still a mess from the whole fallout," Pink agrees. "Won't catch me heading there anytime soon. Talk about a nightmare."

"Who knows why runners do what they do though," White waves off, and that really settles all that. "Anyway, we got some trade offs and the laundry of everyone else that's still subscribing, so really, nothing big is changing."

"Good," says Victor. "Good. That's good. Some stability is- That's good."

The more Mila looks at him, the more off he appears. It's all very startling news, but this isn't exactly what she would expect when hearing about the change in the flowers now doing their drop-off. For one, she expected more dramatics Yuri and the others won't be coming by anytime soon, and this...

This just doesn't feel right.

"Okay, so, I'll do the sign off for the items, and get the payment that I owe Sunflower, I can give that to you right? Okay. Vendetta and Phantom can help with the unloading if you need it. We also got a little gremlin on the rooftop, if there's more to help with."

"I can hear you!" Yuri calls down, but is promptly ignored.

"So," says Victor with a clap of his hands, "form?"

While Pink rummages for whatever it is she uses to gather drop-off signatures from the car, both White and Yellow motion for Mila and Georgi to follow along. Somewhere above them, Mila can hear Yuri start to climb down from the rooftop and passes by Victor with a mask of indifference on his face. She reaches out and gently brushes his arm, gaining his attention, but his expression doesn't change.

"You okay, boss?' she asks, almost a little too quietly, as though she's unsure she wants to hear his response.

"Of course," he replies. "Why wouldn't I be?"

She doesn't get the chance to reply because Pink returns right in front of him with a sheet attached to a clipboard and hands him a pen from her vest pocket. Mila moves on to help with the unloading, but she doesn't really take her eyes away from Victor.

He signs the clipboard with a little more flourish than usual, answers a little more curtly, and avoids actual conversation. He instead opts out of socializing to head back inside their shelter to get the money to pay for whatever it is they owe and slams the door shut behind him.

It makes Mila wince, and she's probably not the only one.

"Is he okay?" Pink asks her when she comes on over to where the others are gathered. "He doesn't seem like himself."

She's right, but Mila doesn't know her, and isn't sure how much to expose. Instead she puts on as friendly as a face as she knows and glances up at the sun.

"Might be the heat? Makes us all a little cranky."

"Yeah, that's true," Pink agrees, and the two share a forced, polite little laugh.

No one else says anything.

It's awkward.

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an actual conversation that happened:
> 
> me: ay, you still got videos of the contamination tour on hand? i want the destroya link.  
> friend: yeah, i can give you links.... am i gonna be in your fic?!  
> me: am i that transparent?  
> friend: i have known you for 20 years and you have been writing fic for 18 of those years, i just know you.
> 
> another conversation that happened:
> 
> friend: okay but, if kobra and party and i'm assuming ghoul and jet are in this fic as their characters, is portraying mad gear as gerard allowed? is that allowed?  
> me: don't make me think too hard okay i'm really trying hard right now to make this verse work.
> 
> -we'll just say that it's... an example... idk
> 
> -i'm back! life's been hard. but, i'm doing better. didn't mean to be absent for so long.
> 
> -i want to catch up. there should be 8 chapters posted already.... i'll do my best.
> 
> -idk if anyone is still reading, if so, thank you.
> 
> -until next time, stay shiny, keep running xoxo

**Author's Note:**

> several things:
> 
> -i love the danger days era. i have lived through every era, participated in every era, was a devout member of the mcrmy and i will always say danger days is my favorite era
> 
> -most (at least 95%) of this world building is from old rp's from 2010-2014. a lot of aspects of it are not "canon". the flower chain was an original idea, the towns and landmarks are original, basically this is gonna read more like a bunch of old headcanons based on the transmission videos than the comics
> 
> (because i love gerard way, he is my father and my mother, but i have a lot of questions when it comes to killjoys)
> 
> -this is also going to read like a novel. there is set up and world building, and i'm not gonna lie, actual romantic like interaction doesn't happen until the madd gear concert and that is... some thousand words away. so if you wanna hit the red line and kick up dust with me on this ridiculous journey of a fic, take my fucking hand and never be afraid again
> 
> (that was a lyric from bullets, but you're gonna see a bunch of lyrics throughout this fic ngl)
> 
> -[there is a playlist that i've been adding to and listening to nonstop for the past several months on spotify ](https://open.spotify.com/user/123711700/playlist/2rOab9Ib3dcxh0jCYAiPnD)
> 
> -tbh i have several thousand (up to 60k words) written but i don't know exactly how long it's going to be, i just know that i want to update on the first of every month at midnight until jan 1 2019 because i enjoy being dramatic and it's my artistic expression
> 
> -i love to talk about this verse, i love to answer questions, i love to divulge in backstories and i have several written but not all of them may be published - don't hesitate to leave me messages because again danger days is my favorite era
> 
> -last, but certainly not least, thank you for making it this far, for reading, even if you don't care for it and will never come back, i appreciate the attention. so thanks, keep running, and stay shiny xoxo


End file.
